Dr. Kate Allen, MSSW, is a retired family sociologist with a career as a psychotherapist and social work professor. After she retired from California State University at Sacramento, she served as an expert witness for the defense in dozens of capital murder trials in Texas and four other states, mostly in the south.

Her overall expertise is human behavior in the social environment. She spent many years teaching graduate social work students, as well as providing hundreds of trainings for social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and attorneys in the subjects of attachment disorder, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, trauma, personality disorders, violence, and psychiatric diagnosis. She also maintained a private psychotherapy practice in Texas and California with adults, couples, and adolescent girls.

Along the way, Dr. Allen adopted two special needs children, both of whom suffered neurological damage due to the toxic effects of alcohol in gestation; one child experienced attachment disorder. She counts herself fortunate to have trained in scholarly fields and with having a practice touching on the lives of real people, including the two she reared.