She received her bachelor’s from Emory University and her doctorate in Clinical & Health Psychology from the University of Florida. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center on Child Abuse and Neglect at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Her research interests include the behavioral observation of parent-child interactions, parent education, and group Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Most recently, Brestan-Knight has conducted civic engagement projects focusing on the dissemination and implementation of PCIT to front-line mental health therapists in Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio and Singapore.