Raymond Dionicio Villareal

I started my academic journey at Santa Ana College in Santa Ana, CA. This is where I fell in love with asking questions, getting involved in science, and learning how research can impact the world around us. After graduating with my AA in Psychology, I transferred to UC Irvine to complete a BA in Psychology and Social Behavior. During my undergraduate program, I learned about the brain and started to question how addressing psychopathology could improve people’s quality of life. After graduating from UC Irvine, I enrolled in a School Psychology program at the College of William and Mary. After earning a MEd and EdS in School Psychology, I became a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) and started working in prisons and schools throughout Virginia and Texas. While working in prisons and schools, I began to realize that experiences of trauma had huge impacts on individuals and their trajectories but in very different ways. Hearing that witnessing some violent act or being exposed to constant stress as a child put them on a path towards drugs, gangs, or homelessness became an all-too-common story in the prisons, many times from individuals who had incredible untapped potential for success in any academic or work environment. From there, I knew I wanted to better understand how trauma impacts our learning and memory so that we can create better educational, therapeutic, and scientific programming.