Martha Fernandez is a licensed clinical social worker based in Los Angeles and a co-founder of CEREVITY, a nationwide network of independent licensed clinicians serving executives, founders, physicians, attorneys and airline pilots. Her work focuses on burnout, anxiety, depression and chronic stress in high-achieving professionals, particularly the people who look the most capable from the outside and are often the last to ask for help.

Martha holds a master of social work and a master of arts in gerontology from the University of Southern California. She is trained in cognitive behavioural therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, narrative therapy and solution-focused brief therapy, and she works bilingually in English and Spanish.

She is the author of Wired to Burn, and she led the 2026 CEREVITY High-Achiever Burnout Index, a synthesis report on burnout among senior professionals. She is a credited expert co-author on wikiHow, where her guidance on anxiety, burnout and work-life balance appears across widely read articles, and her commentary has been featured in VICE.

Martha writes about the hidden cost of high performance, why capable people delay care, and what real recovery looks like for people who cannot simply step away.

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2026