New Professor - Cynthia Martinez

Cynthia Martinez has a Psy.D. from The Wright Institute in Berkeley. She was a senior specialist and community support/trauma consultant at Aspire Schools in Oakland, where she provided consultation on trauma-informed and restorative justice practices to K-12 school personnel and mental health services to students. She was previously a post doc fellow scholar at Living in a Non-Violent Community (LINC) at UCSF and psychology intern at Children’s Hospital. Martinez’s dissertation examined the efficacy of school-based group and individual therapy for at-risk youth, and her scholarship centers on mixed-methods approaches to understanding parental involvement and community organizing in urban educational settings. She has made professional presentations at highly competitive conferences such as the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) and APA, as well as local and state conferences and events. Martinez has been an invited lecturer and presenter at the University of San Francisco, City of Berkeley Mental Health, The Wright Institute, U.C. Davis, U.C. Berkeley, the San Francisco Boys’ and Girls’ Club, and Saint Mary’s College, on topics ranging from stress and trauma, family engagement, restorative practices and social justice in multi-cultural contexts, intimate partner violence, and child psychopathology. Her theoretical orientation combines Critical Race Theory (CRT), popular education and community organizing, narrative and attachment theories, and a trauma-informed approach using CBT.