As an entrepeneur

This summer I decided I would use my experience as a school psychologist and my expertise with the Spanish language to develop a curriculum for a Spanish Immersion Summer Camp in Palo Alto. I called it Somos Amigos.

I enrolled a couple of Spanish speaking friends as teachers, trained them, developed the curriculum, created and put up the website, conditioned the space, bought tons of materials, designed a flier and distributed hundreds of copies of it everywhere. It was a lot of work but also a lot of fun.

Parents were very pleased and the kids had a great time and learned a lot. I received many requests to continue offering the class during the school year. As much as I enjoyed it, however, I think I'll save the materials to teach Spanish to my baby girl and go back to a full time job in which I can interact with other adults :)

As a project director

For the past 6 years I worked at HopeLab (hopelab.org) a non-profit in Redwood City, CA. I was responsible for the coordination of research efforts at HopeLab, including scheduling focus groups and usability studies, managing data, and ensuring that HopeLab’s research projects ran smoothly and effectively.

I was also responsible for adapting and translating HopeLab study documentation and interactive technology interventions for the Spanish-speaking population.

I played a key role in the formative research and development of HopeLab’s first product, the Re-Mission video game for teens and young adults with cancer. Ialso provided leadership in the management of the 34-site Re-Mission Outcomes Study to evaluate the efficacy of the game. Results of this research were published in August 2008 in the medical journal Pediatrics .

As a psychologist

I was also trained at the University of Guadalajara (http://www.udg.mx/) and I loved it. I poured myself into those many years of study and obtained the award for academic excellency for getting the best grades of my generation.

While still in college, in 1998, I started working on the field evaluating patients in psychiatric hospitals. I also worked as a school psychologist for a few years. But soon I realized I wanted to work with families and couples so, in 1999 I opened my private practice: APOYA (Asesoria Psicologica, Orientacion y Analisis). Some of my collegues came to work at what became a comprehensive unit for psychological attention and support.

I work very succesfully with a broad group of people serving our community until 2003 which is the year I moved back to USA to work at Stanford.

As a translator

Back in the day in Mexico the idea of going to school was directly linked to getting a job. While in the University of Guadalajara and at a very young age I selected the field of Languages as my area of specialty (kind of like a major). It has been 15 years since I started to freelance as a translator and interpreter. I've always liked the idea of lending my voice to those eager to share new ideas and concepts and my ears to those willing to learn from them and break the barriers of language.

I've been a member of the American Translators Association (www.atanet.org/) since 2004. The biggest, most relevant work I've ever done as a translator is the localization of a video game for kids with cancer called Re-Mission (www.re-mission.net/) and the materials for its clinical trial. It was super hard and fantastic!

This is me...

... well, of course it is the best picture of me ever taken, but still counts as me, right?

I was born in New York, raised in Guadalajara, Mexico where I became a Clinical Psychologist in 1999 and established a private practice. I came back on January 2003 to persue another one of my passions: Research. At the beggining I worked at Stanford as a Research Assistant for a little while and then I joined a non-profit called HopeLab where I started as Research Assistant too and ended as a Project Director of Research and member or the Senior Management Team.

I'm a new mom and a very happy wife too. It's time for me to go back to work and here you'll find a lot of information about me, thanks for visiting!