She graduated with her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico (UNM) and completed her clinical internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the Atlanta Veterans Administration Medical Center. While at UNM, she was awarded training fellowships from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to develop expertise in program development, management and outcomes research focusing on the dissemination of evidenced based interventions within university, hospital and community health settings.