She graduated from Brown University in 1974, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, with honors in psychology. She received a PhD in clinical psychology from UCLA in 1979. Her dissertation was supported by a Woodrow Wilson Research Grant in Women’s Studies. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in sex therapy and sex research at SUNY at Stony Brook in 1981. She was Assistant Professor of Psychology in Urology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center from 1982-1986 and served as Staff Psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation until 1999. She then returned to MD Anderson Cancer Center, becoming a tenured full professor in 2003.