Our Team

Chris Hoff Ph.D., LMFT

Executive Director / Clinical Director

Chris Hoff is the founder and executive director of California Family Institute, a social enterprise dedicated to making quality narrative-informed therapy accessible to the Orange County community. Chris describes his work as cultural architecture: designing the conditions under which new possibilities become thinkable, then buildable. Most therapy treats problems as things to be solved and most consulting treats organizations as machines to be optimized. He works differently, using chronotopes (time-space patterns that organize experience), futuring practices, and what he calls "counter-defuturing" to resist the systematic elimination of our capacity to build meaningful futures. This is compositional work - studio work. ## Background Before becoming a therapist, Chris built companies, including co-founding and exiting an eight-figure staffing firm. He founded CFI as a social enterprise and has worked in organizational development and leadership coaching, supervised therapists, and served on nonprofit boards supporting arts and social justice. His formal training includes a Ph.D. in MFT with a concentration in organizational development (Loma Linda University) and a Master's in Clinical Psychology (Pepperdine). He is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California (#53081). ## How He Works Chris is interested in moments when people realize the story they are living no longer tells the truth. He works as a thinking companion, a careful listener to language, and someone attuned to liminal space - helping surface the stories already shaping people's choices. He is less interested in why things happened and more interested in how certain stories keep repeating and how they might loosen. ## Influences His work draws from Michael White's narrative therapy, Pierre Wack's scenario planning, and Mikhail Bakhtin's chronotopes, alongside contemporary thinkers such as Byung-Chul Han, Édouard Glissant, Bruno Latour, Arturo Escobar, and AnaLouise Keating. It is also shaped by philosophy and cultural theory, Zen practice and contemplative inquiry, and art, design, and speculative futures. ## Beyond CFI He writes about these ideas on his Substack, Liminal Lab, and hosts The Radical Therapist podcast, exploring the intersections of collaborative therapy, philosophy, art, and science and technology in a post-postmodern world. Dangerous Stories Studio is where all of this comes together: a constellation of offerings for people and organizations who have outgrown the story that once made sense.

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Elizabeth Armstrong MA, LMFT

Clinical Supervisor

Elizabeth Armstrong is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist working in full time private practice in Costa Mesa, California. Elizabeth earned her Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University in 2016. She is AAMFT certified in Substance Misuse and LGBTQIA affirmative therapy; she is also a certified Pet Grief Counselor. As a post-modern therapist practicing within an existential framework, Elizabeth works from a positive, collaborative, strengths-based approach. Elizabeth is passionate about animals, travel, music, art, and the outdoors; she is also a certified Reiki healer.

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Jonathan Miranda MA, MFT Associate

Therapist | Director of Operations

Jonathan Miranda is a Marriage and Family Therapy Associate and Graduate student at Alliant International University. He earned his B.S. in Biology with an emphasis in Molecular Cell Biology and Physiology at California State University Long Beach. Jonathan has always been passionate about helping people. After working in an ambulance for several years, Jonathan realized he wanted to work with people on a deeper level and for longer periods of time. Working so closely with the community helped him realize just how important culture, society, socioeconomic status, social class, and discourse play in creating problems in people’s lives. Grounded in Narrative theory, Jonathan takes a collaborative, curious, and strengths-based approach to therapy. He strives to increase client agency and create a safe space for clients. Jonathan helps individuals, couples, and families challenge and overcome the problems they face to build a meaningful life. In his free time, Jonathan enjoys climbing and going outdoors.

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