Elena Harris

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Elena Harris is a psychotherapist in private practice and a PhD Candidate in Marriage and Family Therapy at the California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant University.

After relocating to California following a legal career in London and Hong Kong and raising a family, she decided to pursue her life-long dream of becoming a therapist. Elena is licensed to practice as a marriage and family therapist in California, USA. She has obtained additional training in several modalities, including Gottman Method, EFT, ACT, CPT, and TF-CBT. Her professional experience includes working with clients experiencing moderate to severe mental illness, addiction, eating disorders, and less acute individual and relationship difficulties. Elena has worked with all categories of clients providing individual, family, couple, and group therapy, with a specific focus on improving access to mental health care for underserved populations. In 2022, she was awarded a $25,000 Allied Healthcare Scholarship by the California Department of Health Care Access and Information to support her work offering direct patient care in a medically underserved area of California.

Elena’s current clinical and research interests are centered on therapy with couples affected by infidelity. She created and presented a feminist contextual couple therapy workshop, “What is due and what is owed: Attending to the state of justice in the client’s world,” at the 2024 Alliant International University couple and family therapy conference in San Diego, California. In 2026, she completed a qualitative research study on best practices in applying feminist therapy with couples who have experienced infidelity. Based on the results of her research, she presented a poster, “Towards Best Practices in Feminist Therapy with Heterosexual Cisgender Couples Affected by Infidelity” at the 3rd Convention of Asian Pacific American Feminist Psychology in San Diego, California. Elena’s teaching experience includes providing instruction, grading, and designing course materials for the Introduction to Psychopathology and Qualitative Research I and II, core curriculum courses of the MA and PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy programs at Alliant University.