Speaking & Writing
I speak from experience.
The scholarship, the relocation to a village in Spain, the passion projects — none of it is abstracted. I bring the full story into every conversation.
Speaking Topics
Midlife Professional Pivot
Not the inspirational version. The real one — with failed businesses, credential accumulation, geographic relocation, and the particular courage it takes to start over when you know enough to know the risks.
For university audiences, leadership programs, and professional women’s organizationsTestimonio-Praxis: Centering Community Knowledge in Education
A framework developed through 30 years of practice and a doctoral dissertation. How educators can move from extracting knowledge from marginalized communities to building WITH them — and what that changes about pedagogy, curriculum, and institutional culture.
Food as Cultural Knowledge in Immigrant Communities
Food is how immigrant communities transmit identity across generations and geographies. A recipe is a knowledge document. A kitchen is an archive. A meal is testimony. Drawing from the research behind Las Manos que Saben — a documental book series on immigrant women in Valencia.
For academic conferences, food humanities programs, and community education contextsLatino and Immigrant Communities as Knowledge Producers
The stories we don’t tell about immigrant communities — as experts, as entrepreneurs, as teachers. What higher education loses by treating these communities as research subjects rather than knowledge partners.
Social Entrepreneurship in Education
What happens when you build ventures designed to test your pedagogy in the world — with real users, real revenue, and real community stakes. The intersections of scholarship, social enterprise, and service.
Building Across Cultures: A Practitioner’s Perspective
Thirty-five years of building programs and projects at the intersection of Latin America, the U.S., and Spain. What works, what fails, and what cultural competency actually requires beyond the classroom.
A recipe is a knowledge document. A kitchen is an archive. A meal is testimony.
Speaker Bio
Valeria Elliott, PhD, is a scholar, speaker, and social entrepreneur whose work sits at the intersection of education, identity, and community.
She holds a doctorate in Africana, Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies from the University at Albany, SUNY, and a law degree from the Universidad Nacional de Santa Fe, Argentina. She is the founder of Spanish Inspired and the co-founder of Casa Lucia — a cultural association in Oliva that amplifies the voice of immigrant women, particularly those from marginalized groups, through the living video archive and the book series Las Manos que Saben.
Her Testimonio-Praxis Framework, developed across 35 years of practice and research, is the through-line connecting her scholarship, her ventures, and her speaking. She splits her time between Albany, New York and Oliva, Valencia, Spain.
Booking
Available for keynotes, academic conference presentations, faculty workshops, panel discussions, and university guest lectures.
Invite me to speak →Booking 2026–27 ✶
Writing
Essays
I write on midlife professional reinvention, immigrant and Latino knowledge systems, food as cultural knowledge, and the experience of building a life between cultures.
Poco a Poco: A House, A Life, A Crossing
A lyric memoir in three parts. About a 19th-century house in a Spanish village, a life built across three countries, and what it means to finally arrive. Writing in progress.
Academic Writing
Testimonio-Praxis: A Framework for Centering Latino/a Knowledge in Higher Education (Dissertation, University at Albany, SUNY, 2026).