My program of research examines how violence and structural adversity shape academic and psychological functioning across the lifespan, with a particular focus on Latina/o/x youth and parents. I explore contextual factors such as exposure to community violence, sexual harassment, and neighborhood disinvestment, and how these intersect with individual and cultural resilience to influence developmental outcomes. Grounded in a resilience framework and strengths-based perspective, my work identifies protective factors at the individual, family, neighborhood, and cultural levels such as familismo, hope, parent-adolescent relationships, religiosity, and academic engagement that can buffer youth and adults from negative mental health and educational outcomes. Increasingly, my research also focuses on the intersection of multiple marginalized identities, examining how race and ethnicity, gender, class, and rurality shape experiences of trauma and healing. In my free time, you can find me with my three boys Alfredo [16], Adrian [16], and Mateo [4] and our beautiful cat Teddy. We are often setting up movie marathons or bingeing new TV series together.
