Dr. Valandra Speaks

Dr. Valandra is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at St. Catherine University. She has fourteen years (seven post-MSW) of community-based, direct, and administrative social work practice experience primarily in child welfare, gender-based violence, and homelessness case management services with vulnerable, urban, and African American individuals, families, and communities. Her research agenda focuses on trauma, loss, and recovery experiences across the life-cycle associated with gender-based violence and its intersections with social, economic, and political privilege and oppression specifically related to lives of African American communities, families, and individuals. Valandra has presented and published nationally on the topics of culturally responsive child abuse prevention, African American women and healing from domestic sex trafficking, and researcher reflexivity and professional use of self.