Dr. Villarreal earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, a Master’s Degree from the University of San Francisco in Counseling, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Health Psychology from The California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) at Alliant International University, with specializations in Behavioral Medicine, Cognitive Neuroscience and Personality Assessment. She is trained as an Advanced Certified Personal and Executive Coach (ACPEC) through the College of Executive Coaching, focusing on leadership and corporate people management. She has conducted research through the Center for HIV and AIDS Prevention (CAPS) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), with scientific publications in the areas of sexual risk behavior as it relates to gender and cultural constructs. She teaches coursework on Psychology of Personality, Abnormal Psychology, Assessment of Diverse Populations (UC Berkeley), Conflict Resolution (Hult International Business School), and Personality Assessment, Cognitive Assessment and Health Psychology/Behavioral Medicine (Argosy University).

Dr. Villarreal currently provides executive coaching and leadership training for global organizations across the tech ecosystem, finance/venture and media industries.  She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, California. She has experience coaching C-suite/SVP/Director/senior manager leaders and teams from an extensive range of organizations, including Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Pixar, Slack, Airbnb, Bluesky, Frog Design, Klaviyo, Kapor Capital, LinkedIn, Netflix, Instagram, Salesforce, Hubspot, Box, Bitso, Uber, ICONIQ Capital, Vertex Ventures, Amazonlab126, Felicis Ventures, Toast, ServiceNow, San Francisco Giants, Tomabravo, JLL Spark, a16z, Wonderschool, Certares, UiPath, BetMGM, Ro Health, Forethought.ai, Credit Karma, Willett Advisors, Fivestars, Peerspace, Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Echoing Green, Camelback Ventures and Kauffman Fellows.  Dr. Villarreal has expertise supporting founders of fast scaling pre-seed/seed stage start-ups through the challenges of fundraising growth stages.  She provides organizational assessments to better understand company leadership functioning and growth using evidence based tools like 360 Refined (360 degree feedback).

Dr. Villarreal’s past work has been featured in a variety of international publications and television news networks including The Wall Street Journal, Techcrunch.com, The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), ABC, CBS, .Mic, KQED San Francisco, NPR, The Oxygen Channel, TD Jakes Show, The Lifetime Channel, Scholastic Scope Magazine, OWN, Topix Media Lab, and La Tercera, Chile’s national news publication.

Currently, Dr. Villarreal balances her professional time between executive leadership coaching and consultation, corporate training and psychology education and resides in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, California.