Elizabeth Brestan-Knight, PhD., is the Alma Holladay Endowed Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Auburn University, where she has been a faculty member for the past 23 years. She has held two professorships, won several awards for her teaching, and served as the department co-chair and undergraduate program director.  Dr. Brestan-Knight has authored numerous chapters and articles as well as a book published by Wiley-Blackwell, A Guide to Teaching Developmental Psychology. She is the director of the Parent-Child Research Lab at Auburn where her clinical research team provides PCIT and evaluates PCIT training workshops and PCIT treatment fidelity. Recent projects have also included the development of an artificial intelligence program for use in therapy and program evaluation for established PCIT clinics. 

Brestan-Knight held a minority fellowship during her graduate training at the University of Florida, where Dr. Sheila Eyberg (the founder of PCIT) was her research mentor. As a result of her multi-cultural background, Brestan-Knight has included an emphasis on DEI issues throughout her career. She has recruited and mentored a number of BIPOC undergraduate and graduate students over the past two decades, conducted research on topics related to underserved families, founded the diversity committee in her department, and taught graduate diversity for the Department of Psychological Sciences for a number of years.

Brestan-Knight has conducted training focusing on the dissemination and implementation of PCIT to front-line mental health therapists across the US (Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Washington DC, Wisconsin) and internationally (Japan, Lebanon, Norway, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea).  She also has a special interest in continuing education and has produced PCIT International’s library of CE videos since 2015.