I am a health policy and services researcher and Master of Public Policy candidate at UC Riverside School of Public Policy (expected June 2026, GPA 3.97), where I hold the Vice Provost Excellence Fellowship. I hold a B.S. in Public Health Nutrition with minors in Sociology and Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

My approach frames social policy as health policy: examining how upstream structural factors - health insurance, social welfare and protection systems, public expenditure, integrated care models, and occupational stress  - drive disparities in health outcomes across populations and settings, grounded in Fundamental Cause Theory (FCT) and draws on quantitative and qualitative methods including difference-in-differences, regression analyses, cost-benefit analysis, and semi-structured interviewing. My long-term goal is to research and teach how structural and psychological stressors shape the health of both patients and providers - examining self-reported and biomarker outcomes to understand what drives poor health, what protects against it, and how integrated care policies can improve outcomes on both sides of the clinical relationship. These findings can inform the development of health policies and services.

I am currently completing my MPP capstone on the prevalence of health conditions and health services utilization among caregivers, clinicians, and administrative staff, mentored by Dr. Bruce Link, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at UCR (who also co-developed FCT!). I am also a co-author on a manuscript examining 25 years of social and structural determinants of cardiovascular risk and disease in Black adults as part of the Jackson Heart Study, and a Development and Operations Associate at the Government Accountability Project in Washington, D.C., where I have secured over $50,000 in grant funding for whistleblower protection and public health programs.

Growing up in Lagos, Nigeria - and moving between that context and the United States - gave me a firsthand lens on what it means to navigate health and social systems shaped by scarcity, inequality, and policy failure. That experience is not incidental to my research; it is foundational to the questions I ask and the communities that I center. 

Beyond research, I am a published fiction author, civic educator, and policy communicator. My novel Shape of the Sun is available now. I developed a college planning resource on Amazon to make higher education navigation more accessible, and founded Expanded Perspectives, a K-12 civic education multimedia project designed to build policy literacy and youth civic engagement. I serve as a Dean's Brand Ambassador, chair the Health Impact Hub at UCR School of Public Policy, host the Health Impact Hub podcast, and serve on the APPAM Student Activities Committee.