meet some of the amazing 2019 students!

Alejandra is a doctoral candidate in a clinical psychology program at the University of Wyoming. She was born in Mexico and grew up in south Texas. As such, she is aware of the inequalities that plague minority populations, especially in regard to access to appropriate mental health care. She is interested and invested in advocating for vulnerable and under-served populations both clinically and through her research. Her research and clinical interest include working with ethnic minorities and immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and sexual assault and domestic violence survivors. She is currently working on her doctoral dissertation that will explore how acculturation and public policy affect the health of Latinx immigrants in the U.S. As an immigrant, Alejandra is committed to being a culturally competent bilingual psychologist that provides services in underserved, low-resource communities, especially Latinx populations, which is why she applied to work with PASEO. She is grateful that both PASEO and Sayariy Resurgiendo provided her with the opportunity to continue to enhance her Spanish-speaking abilities to better serve the Latinx population and learn more about her role as a Latinx psychologist.

Maria Kraemer is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at Biola University in La Mirada, CA. She graduated from Wheaton College in 2017 with degrees in Psychology and Spanish and has previously studied abroad in Guatemala and Spain to improve her language abilities. Her clinical and research interests focus on trauma experiences and resiliency factors in Latinx immigrants. Maria is thankful for the training and clinical experience she received during the PASEO program and hopes to be able to provide culturally-informed mental health services in Spanish to Latinx immigrants in the US in the future

Kimberly is a second-year doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at Saint Louis University. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Spanish Language, Culture, and Literature from the University of Puget Sound in 2015. She aspires to work in hospital settings, with individuals who have suffered neurologic injuries, to help them rehabilitate cognitively and emotionally. Specifically, she uses neuropsychology and rehabilitation psychology perspectives to approach studying function and resilience after negative health events. She continues to develop her Spanish language vocabulary and fluency with the goal of serving Spanish-speaking patients that she encounters in her clinical work.

Dr. Shari Kim is the founder and CEO of Susquehanna Valley Community Mental Health Services, a center for survivors of complex trauma, human trafficking, and sexual exploitation in York County, PA.  She serves as Chair of the Behavioral Health Workgroup for the York County Human Trafficking Task Force and the Human Trafficking Subcommittee for the Pennsylvania Psychological Association.  She is also a Disaster Mental Health Volunteer with the American Red Cross and serves as Regional Co-Lead for the Greater Pennsylvania Region.  She is trained in EMDR and DBT, and her primary areas of interest are trauma and addictions.  Shari also provides training in treatment of survivors of human trafficking through PESI.  In her free time, she loves to be outside and spending time hiking and camping with her family.

Kevin is a doctoral student in Counseling Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. This summer, Kevin completed a clinical internship with Sayariy Resurgiendo, a grassroots organization in El Porvenir that empowers migrants in low-resource settings and connects them with educational and economic resources. As a mental health partner, Kevin delivered psychological assessments with youth, conducted clinical interviews with mothers, wrote assessment reports integrating this information, and provided feedback and recommendations to the families on addressing and further developing each child's strengths and difficulties. Kevin’s research interests include disseminating and implementing evidence-based interventions to address mental health inequities in Spanish-speaking communities. Kevin’s future career goals include providing psychotherapy services and delivering psychological assessments in Spanish in an integrated behavioral health setting. He is also interested in training mental health professionals to provide linguistically and culturally sensitive mental health services with Spanish-speaking communities. Kevin’s experiences with the PASEO program and Sayariy Resurgiendo have been a positive experience in his development as an emerging bilingual psychologist.