Welcoming two of the newest YCSC community members this spring

The Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) – which serves as the department of child psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine – welcomes new community members on an on-going basis. All new faculty, staff, and trainees are invited to share bios and photos upon joining the department.

In addition to the 2024 summer interns who joined in early June, meet two of the latest additions to the department this spring: Ilenia Gori in the Sukhodolsky and Ibrahim labs and Alexandra Brizuela at the Center for Emotional Intelligence.

Alexandra Brizuela, MHC joined the YCSC as the program manager of product and content at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. An American-Salvadoran, Brizuela holds a master's degree in mental health counseling from Florida International University. Before joining Yale, she worked in El Salvador as the social emotional program director at the American School of El Salvador, where she discovered RULER, a program that has profoundly influenced her work. She has extensive experience in clinical work and creating social emotional learning (SEL) curricula to support both adults and students in developing their SEL skills. She is deeply passionate about SEL, dedicating her career to advancing emotional intelligence and well-being in educational settings. She lives in Connecticut and is an avid traveler, enjoys photography, and infuses her projects with enthusiasm and creativity.

lenia Gori, MD has joined the Sukhodolsky Lab and Ibrahim Lab as a postgraduate fellow. She earned her medical degree in child and adolescent neuropsychiatry at Meyer Children's Hospital, Florence and is trained in diagnosis, assessment, and intervention in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Gori is a psychotherapist with psychodynamic and psychoanalytic orientation focused on the treatment of children, adolescents, and their families. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Ramon Lull University (Barcelona) and her research focuses on the application of the modified mentalization-based treatment in children (MBT-C) technique in children with ASD and on the theoretical and neurobiological foundations for the generalization of dyadic social learning. She is also interested in psychodynamic psychopharmacology. She participates in national and international scientific and academic activities, with her own publications and papers, and currently works in private practice (Imagina Center) and in the public system.