I started my career in the Fall of 1987 shouting “War Eagle” at the top of my lungs every Saturday afternoon. I was going to be an architect, but a series of random events landed me in a Developmental Psychology class sometime around the end of my sophomore year at Auburn University. No more unique or unusual than the random events that pepper the historical tapestry of most lives, they called me to change my major to psychology and, ultimately, to this opportunity to connect with you.

I can’t say that I was thrilled when my advisor told me in the fall of my senior year that I could do nothing with my bachelor’s degree and I would have to spend the entirety of my 20s in graduate school, but I always did love a challenge. Each step of the way from my Ph.D., to getting my incredible academic job at the University of Texas at Austin, to earning tenure, starting my own business, and getting board certified in forensic psychology. The most meaningful steps in my career have always been about the challenge.

This is what first drew me to forensic psychology: every case is a new challenge. What has sustained me, and ultimately led me to leave academia, is the privilege of being able to apply social science to the questions of law as a way to promote fairness and social justice on a real, practical, and individual level. I truly believe that the solution to the shortcomings of our legal system lie in science. To extend the theory of the great education reformer and abolitionist Horace Mann, I believe science has the ability to be the great equalizer in a court of law.

With science under attack from so many directions, I find my vocation under attack as well, especially as a social scientist. Pseudoscientific theories often hide behind the idea that social science is wrongly perceived as “soft.” They are easily marketed by daytime TV shows and advocates because their premises are often simple and relatable. The Internet has fueled these fires. It is my job as your consultant to give you the scientific lay of the land in whatever area you hire me. As we talk, you may find this lay of the land counter to your client’s goals and decide not to hire me. Likewise, I may be the one to decline your case. If we work together, I prepare as if opposing counsel has hired the most world renowned. If I need to decline, it is because I learned a long time ago that I am no use to any case if I am not effective on cross and I can’t continue to help others if I jeopardize my credibility with the court.

Outside my consulting practice, I am the mother of two disabled poodles and a wife of 15 years to a talented and creative professional musician. I am a writer, musician, and quilt artist who also turns into an avid fisherman whenever my Dad is around. I’m an environmentalist and serve on the board for Save Our Springs, an avid NPR and PBS consumer, a lover of all creatures, naturalist and a committed supporter of social justice and equality, just as one would expect from a retired college professor from Austin, Texas.

Dr. Sherry obtained her B.A. from Auburn University in 1991 with a major in Psychology and a minor in Child and Family Development. Towards the latter part of her undergraduate work and following graduation, she worked with moderately intellectually disabled adults in a group home setting creating habilitation protocols aimed at helping residents develop, keep, or improve daily living skills and functioning. From there, she moved back to Tennessee to work in child welfare for a year before attending Austin Peay State University for her master’s degree in Clinical and Experimental Psychology. During this time, she also completed a year-long psychological assessment internship at Vanderbilt University Medical School and a child therapy internship at Crockett Academy Inpatient Psychiatric Facility for Children, the state inpatient mental health facility for children. She continued working therapeutically with children who were unable to attend school in a traditional classroom environment before moving to Mississippi to attend the University of Southern Mississippi for her Ph.D. As part her Ph.D., she completed a full-time internship at the University of Oregon and upon graduation completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Both her internship and postdoctoral programs were accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association of Psychological Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC).

In 2002, Dr. Sherry was hired as an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin with a dual appointment in the College of Education’s APA Accredited Ph.D. program in Counseling Psychology and master’s degree program in school counseling. She received tenure in 2007 and was promoted to Associate Professor. During the 12 years that she was a full-time research faculty member at UT, she taught graduate courses in ethics, [teaching the Texas Administrative codes for Licensed Professional Counselors (LPC) and Licensed Psychologists (LP) as well as professional codes for the APA and the American Counseling Association (ACA)], Forensic Psychology, Substance Abuse, Group Counseling, Objective Psychological Assessment, Multicultural Psychology and Practicum at both the masters and Ph.D. levels. While at UT, Dr. Sherry served as the Associate Director for the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies in the College of Liberal Arts where she planned and implemented a day-long program focused on women and the law and a second campus-wide conference on Sexual Harassment.

Dr. Sherry has been conducting and publishing academic research since she was an undergraduate. As an undergraduate, she published work trying to understand the effects of date and acquaintance rape on college students over 25 years before the #MeToo movement. She also worked on a non-published project summarizing the little research that was available at the time on the drug ecstasy (MDMA) as the medical community was just beginning to understand its effect on the brain’s release of serotonin. While a graduate student, Dr. Sherry’s research interests shifted to the validation and use of various psychological tests, diversity training in APA accredited programs, and the extent to which attachment theory can predict the development of different personality disorders in adulthood. At Emory, she worked and published with past APA president, Nadine Kaslow, Ph.D. ABPP, on Kaslow’s various Centers for Disease Control grants looking at domestic violence, PTSD/trauma, and suicide in African American women living in urban environments. Once at UT, she continued her work on attachment and personality disorders as well as ran research labs in the areas of gender and sexual identity, measurement and psychological assessment, and statistics/research design. She also chaired over a dozen doctoral dissertations and served three dozen more dissertation committees, helping students with research design, statistical analysis, and professional writing in a variety of research areas such as cutting behavior in adolescents, eating disorders, partner infidelity, the intersection of multiple cultural identities, LGBT identity, the use of the Rorschach in child custody contexts, and attachment theory to name a few. To date, Dr. Sherry has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles and nine book chapters in the professional literature. She has served on the editorial boards of Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Journal for Specialists in Group Work, and Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law.

Dr. Sherry resigned her full-time position at UT in 2015 and continued to teach as an Associate Clinical Professor until 2017, until retiring academic work to pursue full-time consulting practice. In 2005, she began Alissa Sherry Consulting, later renamed Legal Consensus, a consulting practice focused on forensic evaluations and expert testimony. In 2023, she and Michelle Munevar, with whom she supervised for many years, partnered to form Munevar Sherry, expanding Legal Consensus to a more diverse firm with more diverse forensic offerings. She has been a licensed psychologist in the state of Texas since 2003, in Michigan since 2017, and Florida since 2018. In October 2022, she attained the honor of Board Certification in Forensic Psychology granted by the American Board of Professional Psychology. Board certification is not mandatory in psychology like it is in medicine, and such certification denotes a higher standard of practice, proven expertise, and consumer protection. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/alpha-blog-charlie/202211/does-it-matter-if-your-psychologist-is-board-certified) Dr. Sherry also has the authority to practice interjurisdictional telepsychology (APIT) through the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB). Since 2005, Dr. Sherry has been involved in over 800 cases in family, civil, criminal, probate, immigration, education, and employment law conducting forensic psychological evaluations, both as a consulting expert and a court appointed expert. She has testified in deposition, bench, and jury trials well over 100 times. She continues to be involved in academic research and lend her expertise to furthering knowledge in areas unique to forensic work, including continuing to review academic journals including Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law, and Psychology, Research and Practice, among others. She maintains active memberships with Division 41 of the American Psychological Association – American Psychology-Law Society (APLS), Society for Personality Assessment (SPA), Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG), and the American Academy of Professional Psychology (ABPP).