Bilingualism, Culture, and Social Justice in Family Therapy

marcela polanco, es de Bogotá , Colombia e inmigrante en United States. Su ancestry es African, Muisca, and European Colombian. She speaks Español Colombiano and Immigrant Spanglish. As a family terapista , she is part of the faculty team del Master’s en Family Therapy y del Spanglish/Ingleñol Family Therapy training Certificado at San Diego State University located in unceded Kumeyaay land.

Navid Zamani is a Persian-American (Farsi & English-speaking) licensed Marriage and Family therapist practicing in San Diego. His work is structured around supporting families experiencing domestic violence, and conceptualizes these experiences from a poststructural, decolonial feminism situated in Narrative practices. His interests in counseling, philosophy, and music are blended together with an interest in relational ethics, the politics of revolutionary love, and leaning into complexity. He currently teaches at San Diego State University and is the Head of Clinical Services at License to Freedom, a non-profit that supports refugees and immigrants from the Middle East who are experiencing domestic violence issues.

Christina DaHee Kim is a Korean immigrant who grew up in Los Angeles. She traverses between the worlds of English, Korean, and the mix of two languages, Konglish. Her interest in all forms of communication, including various languages and the non-verbal communication, stem from her exposure to Spanish-, Japanese-, and sign language-speaking worlds. As a recent graduate from the Marriage and Family Therapy program at San Diego State University, she hopes to collaborate and explore relational ethics in diverse relationship dynamics from a postmodern lens.