Author: Liana Kallierou-Xylas

Liana Kallierou-Xylas was born in Athens, Greece where she has lived most of her life. She attended the American College of Greece, a high-school for girls, in Athens, and studied History of Art at the British Council also in Athens. She got married at the age of twenty-one and had a daughter. Three years later she divorced and went on to complete her BA. in History of Art. In her thirties, Liana began her volunteer community work: for almost ten years she ran the day-to-day operations of “The Sparrows”, a nursery school for orphan and underprivileged children in Athens. She was honored for her work by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Welfare. Additionally she has been active in various Greek organizations that succeeded in bringing about reforms to Greek family law to benefit single mothers, buttered wives and to secure equal rights for working women. In her forties she decided to return to school and study psychology. Liana completed her BA at Deree College in Athens and went on to the University of Chicago where she attended seminars in Family Therapy. After a brief pause during which she remarried at the age of forty-five, enrolled at the California University, in Santa Anna, and she completed her MA of Science, Psychology. Currently, Liana, at the age of 64 and after a second divorce, started a new career as a Clinical Psychologist and speaker on women’s issues, giving numerous lectures and have been interviewed a lot on radio and television in Greece on these issues. She is a member of the American Psychotherapist Association and of the Adlerian Society of Greece . She is currently the President of Karyatides-Daughters of Penelope, Womens branch of Ahepa, which fosters a day care center of 105 poor and refugee children.