Ana studied from kindergarten to high school in a bilingual Spanish-English school, where she also learned French and German, thanks to the global and forward-thinking vision of her parents who decided to invest in a school with a marked international character.

During her adolescence, Ana participated in various exchange programs in the United States, France (Biarritz) and Germany (Berlin). She still remembers the time she spent in New Jersey as one of the best of her life and still maintains contact with her “American family.” These small cultural immersions not only helped her improve her fluency in the language, but she also gained maturity and confidence from a very young age. Likewise, she began to become familiar with other cultures, which only increased her interest in the study of diversity. She considers traveling one of her great hobbies and meeting new people from all over the world as one of the things that enriches her the most.

This is why Ana decided to study Psychology in English at the Complutense University of Madrid to professionalize her command of the language and, most importantly, with the dream of being able, in the future, to cover a demand that was of interest to Ana. special: offering support to expatriates in their native language.

During her degree, Ana specialized in Neuropsychology and carried out her internship in the Memory Unit of the San Carlos Clinical Hospital, where she worked with geriatric patients with or without cognitive impairment, performing neuropsychological evaluations and functional assessments, with a view to a multidisciplinary diagnosis, as well as subsequent treatment. There she acquired basic knowledge for the interpretation of neuroimaging tests and made her first contact with action protocols in the field of public health. She chose the University of Birmingham for her Erasmus program, where she continued to deepen her interests with subjects such as Neuroimaging, Psychology of Intellectual Disability or Atypical Development and Early Intervention. During her stay in the United Kingdom, she got a job as a Spanish Teaching Assistant at a school as part of a volunteer program. There she joined the Modern Foreign Languages ​​department where she prepared students to take Spanish for their GCSE. After finishing her degree, she carried out extracurricular internships at the Neuroscience Research and Cognition Center of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, within the Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging Research Group.

That same September she was admitted to the Master’s Degree in General Health Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid. During these almost 6 years at said University, Ana combined her studies with her position in the University’s International Relations Office, which brought her closer to the needs and challenges faced by study abroad students.

At that time Ana was beginning to show special attention to what neurodiversity meant. She chose her internship at AMITEA, the Complex Diagnostic Unit for Autism Spectrum Disorders at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital, where she was able to specialize in the psychological tools necessary for a differential diagnosis such as the ADOS-2 test. She also had the opportunity to follow up on patients diagnosed with ASD, and accompany them through behavioral, socialization and communication difficulties.

After the Master’s degree, Ana was selected as a Teaching Assistant at Vassar College, New York. During her stay in the United States she was also able to take subjects such as Neuroscience and Behavior. During that time, she also participated in volunteer work as an interpreter for a non-profit organization that provides lawyers to refugees and immigrants facing deportation in the New York City area. Knowing how language barriers can lead to other barriers such as social, emotional or cultural barriers, as well as barriers when it comes to accessing resources and ultimately, access to human rights, was what encouraged her to focus on this project.

Most of her work and academic experience has therefore been related to this passion for multilingualism, and she is excited to be able to work with a diverse and multicultural population. Currently, Ana speaks fluent German, French, English, Spanish and Galician. Having lived as an expatriate has helped her understand and connect with the difficulties that come with not identifying with a single culture when being far from your country of origin, and that is why she has decided to open the focus of her intervention to other languages ​​to cover the needs of people who do not speak Spanish or at least it is not their mother tongue.

During the last two years she has worked in an association for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) where she has been Responsible for Intervention in Natural Contexts with Spanish and English speaking families. In addition, Ana performed neuropsychological evaluations focused on the differential diagnosis of ASD, due to comorbidity and confusion with other conditions such as high abilities, ADHD or dyslexia, as well as individual sessions with adolescents and adults. Her work in the field of ASD has forged in her a depathologizing view within the world of neurodivegency and much more focused on the person and the family, with a marked systemic nature and with the quality of family life as an indicator. That is why during this time Ana has not only been able to learn more about neurodiversity, but also address and work on her problems outside of the diagnosis such as grief, breakups, anxiety or low self-esteem.

Ana is currently immersed in her Doctorate in Medicine and Surgery at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid at the La Paz Hospital. However, for her it is vitally important to combine research with clinical practice, since she understands scientific research work as fundamental to contributing to improving the quality of life of the population.

Ana works from an integrative perspective, focused on the person, well-being and personal growth, although she values ​​above all the trust and comfort of the person in the therapeutic process, regardless of the approach applied, which, in most cases, will depend on the personal needs of each patient. Her professional commitment is to be able to facilitate, through languages, that foreign people can connect emotionally in their own language with a therapeutic process.