Researcher

Cynthia Valencia-Ayala is a credentialed school psychologist and postdoctoral scholar in the Juvenile inJustice and Behavioral Health Lab in the department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF. She earned her Ph.D. in School Psychology from UC Berkeley where she provided assessment and therapeutic services to overly disciplined and racially minoritized youth in schools and in detention settings. Her current research focuses on understanding and disrupting the link between schools and prisons, including strategies to leverage higher education to reduce recidivism, and assessing the overrepresentation of special education students in the legal system. She specializes in qualitative research and utilizes qualitative methods to center youth experiences and perspectives in her work.