I hold a B.S. in Public Health Nutrition (Health and Society) from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with minors in Sociology and Creative Writing (Fiction). 

I am a Master of Public Policy (MPP) candidate at UC Riverside, where I serve as a Dean's Brand Ambassador for the UCR School of Public Policy. 

My academic focus is on all things health and social protection policies, from development to evaluation, and how they drive global change. Specifically, I am interested in these things:

a.  Social factors and health; the integration of social programs and clinical services, and the impact on health outcomes and barriers to care. 

b. Intersections between social programming and philanthropy, especially how NGOs interact with public service delivery gaps. 

c. Programming impact on non-health outcomes such as vote-buying, citizen re-orientation, civic participation, and individual/national development. 

d. Perceptions of social programming around the world (and how this impacts policy and health outcomes).

e. Institutional barriers and the politics of social programming in emerging or rural economies (and creative ways to navigate barriers and ensure sustainability in 'policy-averse' settings e.g needs assessment surveys, community partnerships, direct benefit transfers, accountability, and oversight components with tested methods and new tech such as AI, etc.)

I am also passionate about policy analysis and communication as tools for fostering civic engagement and national development. 

If I don't work in academia, I will work in philanthropy and/or social protection program planning, development, and evaluation.

Alongside my academic journey, I am a published author of a fiction novel, Aurora, with another ebook, Shape of the Sun, soon to be available. I have a college planner out on Amazon, and I am currently developing a K-12 civic education multimedia project, Expanded Perspectives.

I am currently a member of the APPAM Student Activities Committee and serve as the SPP Liaison for Science to Policy (S2P) @UCR. I am also the SPP Chair for Health Impact Hub, a fiction writer for the UCR Highlander, and fiction editor for Yarnz Magazine. Lastly, I write a public health/policy Medium blog in my spare time.