Zarate is a music psychotherapist, musician, researcher, and educator of music therapy, arts therapies, and arts and health. Her research focuses on community mental health and sustainability, health, wellbeing, and the arts. A licensed Creative Arts Therapist, Board Certified Music Therapist, and certified Vocal Psychotherapist, she has a specific area of expertise in mental health, anxiety, and improvisation-based music therapy.

Zarate’s American story began in 1999 when she graduated with a BMus(hons) from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and embarked on her master’s degree in music therapy at New York University. Being an international faculty member has given her a unique perspective on cultural experiences and issues of access to arts and health. This is at the heart of her mission to do research that has transferrable, translatable, and impactful meaning in the lives of the public and community health and wellbeing.

Her 30-year career working in the arts and healthcare, and with traumatized children, youth, and adults, has led her to be interested in the clinical, social, and cultural intersections of anxiety, and writes and presents on this from clinical, critical, and cultural perspectives. She is dedicated to translating clinical and educational knowledge of music and the arts as a health mechanism into the greater community through the intersections of cross-discipline, interdisciplinary collaborations, and arts and health technologies.

She is the author of the book, “Music psychotherapy and anxiety: Social, community, and clinical contexts,” published by Jessica Kingsley, where she illuminates the various dimensions of anxiety, and the inquiry of music and arts, and the global social issues of the rising impact of anxiety and stress.