Autobiography

My identities

As a psychologist, I regularly reflect on the experiences and identities that shape my work. I was born in Mexico City, the capital of Mexico, a modern, expansive metropolis rich in history and culture. Founded in 1325 by the Aztecs and re-founded in 1521 by the Spanish, the city reflects centuries of layered identities and transformation. I identify as a Mexican with roots in northeastern Mexican Sephardic Jewish communities of Spanish and Portuguese origin, and central Mexico’s Mesoamerican heritage. 

I grew up in Mexicali, the capital of the State of Baja California, which shares the international border with the US town of Calexico, California. 

I grew up in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, where cultural, linguistic, and social worlds intersect in everyday life. From an early age, I was immersed in an environment that placed a strong emphasis on academic excellence and intellectual development, which, in turn, shaped my orientation toward learning and scholarship.

I attended Escuela Leona Vicario, one of the oldest continuously operating public elementary schools in Mexicali, founded in 1924 and recognized as one of the highest-performing public schools in the state. At La Leona, we had access to a wide range of extracurricular activities, including choir, music ensembles, theater, and sports. We participated in the country’s first gifted education program and even had a school bus system, which was quite unique for its time and place. Perhaps the school’s most well-known alumnus is Ernesto Zedillo, who served as President of Mexico from 1994 to 2000, earned a PhD from Yale, and later became a professor of economics there. In 2019, Escuela Leona Vicario became the first public school in Mexico to implement a full bilingual (Spanish–English) curriculum model.

I moved to Calexico, California, during my high school years. One of the factors that helped me adapt to a new cultural environment and to English-language classroom instruction was my ability to play the piano and guitar. Along with friends, I formed a rock band, and I also performed solo piano concerts. Music became a bridge between my former and new worlds, connecting my identities and helping me navigate change. 

In high school, I held numerous part-time jobs both in and outside of school, including work as a math grader and as a pianist accompanist with the Imperial County Arts Council. These experiences, together with my earlier experiences in Mexico, shaped my initial college and career aspirations.

I attended La Sierra University planning to become a high school music teacher. Over time, however, I realized that my strongest academic interest was psychology and that I had developed a passion for tutoring. At La Sierra, I continued to work in a range of part-time roles, including Spanish tutor, psychology research assistant, secretary, and translator. I ultimately decided to pursue a career as a psychologist and psychology professor, with a focus on cultural and linguistic diversity.

Under the guidance of excellent mentors at La Sierra, most notably Drs. Paul Mallery, Adeny Schmidt, and Leslie Martin, I gained valuable research experience, which proved crucial to my acceptance into a PhD program. As a college student, I quickly learned the importance of cultivating strong mentoring relationships with faculty. Although my parents and extended family are highly educated, being the first to attend college in the United States and learning English as a second language presented significant challenges.

I earned my master’s degree (MA) in psychology with an emphasis in social psychology, and my doctoral degree (PhD) in educational psychology with an emphasis in school psychology (APA-accredited and NASP-approved), at Arizona State University (ASU). My mentors at ASU included Drs. George Knight, Linda Caterino, David Wodrich, Kathy Nakagawa, and Flavio Marsiglia. I completed a two-year predoctoral fellowship in health disparities at the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center, where I focused on school-based prevention programs. Subsequently, I completed a psychology postdoctoral residency at a site affiliated with the Arizona Psychological Training Consortium. My mentors in professional psychology included Drs. Joel Hanania, Lisa Merrin, and Pamela Havens.

In Phoenix, I gained experience as a certified bilingual school psychologist working across preschool, elementary, and secondary school settings, while also teaching part-time at the University of Arizona, Chandler campus. I taught their first cohort, including the first class ever offered in the program, serving as instructor for multicultural school psychology in the summer of 2012.

In 2014, I had the opportunity to join the psychology department at California State University, Fresno as a tenure-track assistant professor, where I taught the cognitive/academic assessment course sequence for our school psychology graduate students, as well as introductory statistics, social psychology, and stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination courses to our undergraduate students. This was an invaluable and transformative professional experience for me.

In 2018, I joined the department of educational psychology at Northern Arizona University first as a visiting professor, and then as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2019 in the beautiful mountain campus in Flagstaff. I was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2022.