After receiving my doctorate in community psychology and acquiring over a decade of domestic and international experience as a community development practitioner, I joined the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research (CHPIR) at Duke University as a community psychologist researcher and practitioner.

As a community psychologist, I am someone who tries to embody and advocate for community mental health and community care into research, policy, and practice, in support of marginalized communities faced with the greatest mental health inequities.

 Much of my research interests go beyond an individual focus to integrate more community- and systems- level influences into intervention strategies that promote mental health and well-being, particularly for marginalized youth and young adult populations such as orphaned and separated children, immigrant/refugee youth, youth of color, and LGBTQ youth and young adults in low- and middle- resource contexts.

My work as a community psychologist practitioner both deeply informs my research and vice versa, which takes shape in the form of facilitating mental health therapy groups and mindfulness trainings, creating and adapting mental health interventions to be more culturally salient for the local and global BIPOC and LGBTQ+ community, as well as consultancy, advising, and teaching courses at Duke University.