Faculty of Alliant: Dr. Elena Padrón

By Manny Gonzalez, Winter 2008

As an instructor of Research Proposal Design and Clinical and Ethical Issues, Dr. Elena Padrón is in her second year teaching at Alliant. Having acquired her undergraduate degree in Psychology at UC Berkeley and her joint Clinical and Developmental Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, she eventually returned to her native Venezuela to incorporate what she had developed professionally in a private practice for three years. After embracing her bicultural identity and accomplishing the integration of her professional and personal selves, she returned to California.

Dr. Padrón chose Alliant due to its multicultural focus and opportunities to work with impressive faculty. Currently, she is working with Dr. Robert-Jay Green on designing an ambitious, nationwide longitudinal research project to study children conceived via surrogacy and raised by Gay fathers. She hopes the study will shed light on our understanding of child development in LGBT families, as well as on the role of father-child relationships in the development of attachment.

In addition to her research interests, Dr. Padrón established the Latino Professional Development Forum, for students and faculty. The group's focus is to promote a home base on campus for Latinos to develop their professional identities and multicultural clinical competencies, along with providing guidance and social support.

As a bicultural psychologist, she is the product of two cultures, having the privilege of enrichment from two contextual viewpoints. When asked if she experiences some tension between the two cultures, she indicates that she does, but considers this inherent to being bicultural. She no longer struggles to fit into one cultural context at the exclusion of the other, instead allowing herself to have a more fluid and complex cultural identity.