Marcela Polanco PhD

Marcela Polanco is from Bogota, Colombia, where she studied psychology at University of Los Andes and community psychology at University Javeriana. She migrated to the U.S. on the year 2000, during a time when she got to try out new lives as an immigrant in New York City. Not too long after, she relocated to South Florida where she studied mental health counseling and family therapy at Nova Southeastern University. She also completed the International Diploma on Narrative Therapy and Community work at the Dulwich Centre, Adelaide, Australia. Currently, she lives in San Antonio, TX, where she is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Our Lady of the Lake University—OLLU.

She teaches graduate family therapy courses and supervises Spanish teams. Primarily, she teaches in the OLLU’s Psychological Services for Spanish Speaking Populations Certificate, which is designed to train culturally and linguistically competent practitioners to work with families of Latin American descent. She is interested in narrative therapy, more specifically in the explorations of decolonizing means by which to renew its practices to maintain cultural solidarity to her Colombian/Latin American traditions.