As the eldest of three daughters born into a Mexican American family, my father was a US Naval officer and war veteran and my mother an anesthetist. We traveled to, and lived in, many places and countries. To help you understand how traditional they were, I earned my undergraduate degree in two years mainly because my father taught that a “good girl” went from her father’s house into her husband’s – unless she earned an education so she could support herself, and I really wanted to move out from under his overprotective watch. (My two younger sisters are a chemist and cardiologist!) One of my undergraduate professors told me that to become a psychologist I had to learn how to do research, so I applied for the first research opportunity I found and moved my 20-year-old self to Guam to assist a school psychologist investigate meditation and visualization on vocabulary and math achievement in elementary school children. Due to my parent’s careers, I was raised in relative privilege, but they were raised in poverty. When we weren’t living abroad, we visited our extended families in Texas and Mexico at least every summer and x-mas holiday. Most of my childhood they lived on dirt roads or didn’t have indoor plumbing. The experiences I gained from traveling and living in different communities in my youth exposed me to the problems and pain of marginality and powerlessness that has been a part of life for the people in the communities I came from and learned to care about. I wanted to become a psychologist to help people heal from the traumas that result from the damage imposed on them by systems, institutions, cultures, and circumstances designed to subjugate their lives. While in graduate school in Counseling Psychology at UT Austin I was awarded two pre-doctoral fellowships: in the US Congress and the Public Interest Directorate at the APA. It was during that time that I caught the advocacy spirit and was able to channel my passions for social justice into civic life and importantly within our field of psychology. My career began in a university whose institution’s student body was 75% first generation college, Hispanic, & female. To serve our local community, my colleagues and I created the first PsyD in Counseling Psychology and later a biliterate training program within that APA accredited program. In the 14 years I was there, I felt privileged to be able to touch the careers of so many students who would become the next generation of psychologists. In 2007, while I was in the midst of adopting another child, I voluntarily resigned my tenured position to live closer to my family and embark on the next phase of my career, in independent practice, where I primarily work with BIPOC women and men and conduct immigration evaluations for families who have a member facing deportation. I absolutely love this work. For decades, I have been involved in APA, TPA, and NLPA giving my time and money in various capacities. Most pertinent to my work in the APA, I have served on Council, the Council Leadership Team, the Board of Directors, and currently the Policy & Planning Board. I am a member of several APA Divisions (17, 29, 35, 42, 44, 45) and have served in elected or appointed roles in some of them, including as president of the Society for the Psychology of Women. Additionally, I have served on the Board of Education Affairs, was an accreditation site visitor for the Commission on Accreditation, and have chaired the Committee on Women in Psychology. As a result of my involvement in APA leadership, I have been privy to see how as psychologists, we possess the unique opportunity to educate and facilitate culturally competent change in our discipline, practice, and association. As president, my efforts will focus on advocating for our own transformation so that how we do our work is aligned with the change we want to see in our communities and the world.
