She earned her Ph.D. in Family and Human Development at the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, received her Master’s and Bachelor’s in Developmental Psychology from San Francisco State University. Her primary interests lie in understanding the combination of social (e.g., income, education), cultural (e.g., values, norms, acculturation, language use), and personal (e.g., gender, social competence) characteristics that influence the context where Latino and immigrant families develop socially and emotionally. Her work is centered on two key areas: the negotiation of parent-child relationships across development, and the impacts of culture across the life-span.