Athena Baca-Chieza: Understanding Trans-Racial Identity

In this episode, we speak to Athena Baca-Chieza, Associate Professor, Clinical Director, and Training Coordinator at the University of Colorado Denver, about tran-racial identity, including: 

• Speaking to her experiences as an adoptee and the struggles she faced being different from her family members. 
• How understanding her trans-racial identity helped her more deeply understand herself and how her identity has shaped her experiences.  
• How the Latinx culture can be anti-Black and how her Afro-Latina Identity impacted her relationships. 

Listen on: Podopolo| Spotify | Apple Podcasts| Amazon Music| iHeartRadio | Google Podcasts

About our guest: 

Dr. Athena Y. Baca-Chieza is a clinical health psychologist in Denver, Colorado. She received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in 2006. Dr. Baca-Chieza is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, where she is the Coordinator of Clinical Training and Director of a community mental health clinic in the CU Denver Clinical Health Psychology PhD program. In addition to her current position at CU, Dr. Baca-Chieza also works as a consulting psychologist in the Hem/Onc and Bone Marrow Transplant program at University of Colorado Hospital, where she supports patients who are navigating the complex biopsychosocial intersections of living with blood cancers, and she also conducts pretransplant evaluations. Previously, Dr. Baca-Chieza worked for 10 years at the Colorado Blood Cancer Institute as a BMT psychologist and Training Director, as well as an integrated primary care provider at the South Texas Veterans Health Care System in San Antonio, Texas.

Dr. Baca-Chieza is actively involved in leadership and advocacy for her profession and has served on the board of the Colorado Psychological Association (CPA) since 2015, when she was elected as the state’s Diversity Representative. In 2018 she was elected to serve as President of CPA, a 3-year position, which afforded her opportunities to write laws that impact mental health outcomes for Coloradans, and especially marginalized populations such as LGBTQIA communities who were vulnerable to archaic and harmful practices. Dr. Baca-Chieza is interested in consultation psychology, including leadership selection and development in the healthcare arena and enjoys any opportunity to present on topics related to leadership, advocacy, and professional development. 

Dr. Baca-Chieza proudly hails from the beautiful Bordertown of El Paso, TX, is fluently bi-lingual in Spanish and English and identifies as Afrolatina (Mexican and Black). She lives in the Park Hill neighborh