Renee Buenfil, MA
My passions are driven by my clients, students and my curiosity, because those 3 keep me reading, inquiring, and attending workshops and seminars. Since my first years as a psychologist I have been interested in professional identity formation, which I dedicated my two dissertations to, psychologist’s identity at Marist University and psychotherapist’s identity at Kanankil Institute. Then, I have dedicated my private practice to stay curious about couples’ communication patterns and its emotional background, no matter the issues at hand, when each partner finds a way to empower herself or himself and make their voices heard by taking care of the relationship in new ways, they open themselves to new possibilities. The third of my passions as a therapist are the psychological and emotional aspects of diabetes care and education, where people are struggling to accept their life condition, changing habits, improving communication with their family, health professionals and social support network, and even burn out from diabetes care. My last passion would be my journey towards becoming a collaborative teacher, since it was hard for me to find a position where I felt like I didn’t have to fight with my students to facilitate courses from a postmodern, social constructionist perspective on knowledge and teaching-learning process. Moreover, I take this approach to organizational training since I find them similar in many ways.And there is a bonus: as you and all my collaborative colleagues from over the world know, I am a collaborative translator, I learned from the best (Sylvia London) and took it up a notch by moving from the metaphor of the invisible translator, to the “right there in the middle of all” translator, developing a relationship with the people I translate, for everyone to see.