My work on race and inequality really began when I was a young person growing up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the poorest cities in Southern California – San Bernardino. Like many U.S. cities, San Bernardino was (and still is) economically and racially segregated. Poorer people, mostly families of color, lived on the south side while wealthier people, mostly white families, lived on the north side. Although I did not have the understanding of racial injustice at the time, I experienced the underfunded schools, over policing, and violence that typify systemic racial injustice.

After dropping out of high school, I was admitted to an “alternative” high school about a year later. Through deep mentoring from my teachers, principle, and other powerful people, I attended a local community college and transferred to the University of California, Riverside, where I began learning about issues of systemic racism. This education gave me the frameworks to understand my own lived experiences and gave me the drive to work toward racial equity.

I soon found myself at California State University, Chico studying how the social sciences could be used as a tool for social change. After completing my master’s, I moved to Michigan State University to complete my Ph.D. in community psychology. In 2013 I joined the University of Washington Bothell, where I have the opportunity to work with students that have very similar backgrounds to my own.

As an activist scholar, I am interested in the ways that we can use the tools of the social sciences toward community and social change.