Aída Teresa Mencía Ripley is a scientist and clinical psychologist from the Dominican Republic. She is Dean of Academic Research and UNESCO Chair on Social and Academic Inclusion for People with Disabilities and Special Education Needs at the Iberoamerican University of the Dominican Republic (UNIBE).
She was born in Santo Domingo and raised in New York. She is the daughter of Aída Ripley Gómez (the daughter of Dominican hall of fame sportsman Enrique Ripley Marín and Aída Gómez) and Rafael Mencía Ochoa. She is the niece of artist Geo Ripley. Her paternal grandfather was Dominican diplomat Rafael Mencía Lister.
Mencía-Ripley graduated Summa Cum Laude from St. John's University with a B.A. in psychology and earned an M.A. from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. She later earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. from St. John´s University. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, WPATH, and the Young Scientist Chapter of the Dominican Academy of Sciences. She is also a member of the Comité Dominicano Barón Pierre de Coubertin.
Her main areas of research are gender identity, clinical psychology, psychometrics, and psychology of language. She is an advocate for inclusive education in the Dominican Republic and deals with issues related to ethical and culturally respectful research in developing countries. As Dean of Research at UNIBE, she has steered initiatives that led to the creation of several research laboratories and international agreements to foster scientific research in the Dominican Republic.
Works and publications
Some works of Mencía Ripley are: