A history of global citizenship
I grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina speaking French at home, English on the weekends and Spanish in school. I graduated from Universidad de Buenos Aires with a degree in psychology where I heard of the pioneering research conducted at the Mental Research Institute (MRI). I followed my intellectual curiosity and arrived in the United States in 1983. Immediately I connected with John Weakland, Richard Fisch, Paul Watzlawick and Carlos Sluzki at the MRI. My license from Universidad de Buenos Aires was not recognized in the U.S., so I pursued a Master’s degree at San Jose State and received my Marriage and Family Therapy license in 1991. By 1994, I was a Senior Research Fellow and had started the Latino Brief Therapy Center—with a mission to provide mental health services to low-income communities.
I later founded the non-profit organization, Room to Talk, which extended these services to several elementary and high schools in East Palo Alto. I was the Executive Director and Development Director of Room to Talk, supported by a dynamic Board of Directors from several tech companies in the Silicon Valley. Room to Talk helped hundreds of underserved families, predominantly African American and Latino, in East Palo Alto.
I was an Adjunct Clinical Instructor at Stanford University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Services from 2008 to 2010, and have been a Supervising Associate Professor at the School of Family Therapy, Department of Psychiatry at the Hospital de San Pau y la Santa Creu in Barcelona, Spain since 2011. This Fall I will be teaching a class as a visiting professor at the UNAM University in Mexico City.
I currently supervise students in Spain, Paraguay, Chile and China via video conferencing and conduct workshops and trainings in English, Spanish and French, world wide.