Ema San Payo has a master’s degree in Clinical and Systemic Health Psychology (Family, Community and Forensic) from the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Lisbon. During her master’s degree, she did an internship at a foster home where she worked with children, biological and adoptive families and the technical team, focusing on playful methodologies. This experience meant that, at the same time, writing her thesis on adoption wasn’t just a theoretical abstract and, in Valencia in 2023, she presented it at the 9th edition of the International Congress of Clinical Psychology and Child and Adolescent Health.

In 2024, she did an Erasmus+ internship at the Dedalus Social Cooperative in Naples, co-creating socio-emotional integration projects with and for unaccompanied foreign minors.

Since 2021, she has been volunteering with homeless people, as a tutor and in a very close monitoring of a refugee child, and also in a local development initiative in the Bela-Flor neighborhood in Lisbon, or in a project supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, of intervention through video-participation in the interior of the country. With a view to working for social justice, she also highlights the theater and choir she was a member of as having been instrumental in shaping her attitude as a psychologist, leading her to continue investing in training in areas such as Community Psychology, Participatory Practices and Art Pedagogy.

She is currently a member of the ProChild CoLAB team, working on the Protection axis of the Family to Family project.