About Me

I am currently enrolled in the Neurobiology and Behavior PhD program with the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to UCI, I earned both my M.Ed. and Ed.S. in School Psychology from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. I served my community as a psychometrist at Oceanside Evaluations, working with children and adults in clinical, residential, and prison settings. I also earned a B.A. in Psychology and Social Behavior from UCI and an Associates for transfer (A.A.T.) in Psychology from Santa Ana College.

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My research interests come from a life of experiences living in low-income neighborhoods, dropping out of high school, and losing friends to prison, drugs, gang violence, or all three. As a youth, I remember enjoying school but never doing well. However, once I left my neighborhood and all of the violence and gangs, I began to grow. This growth helped me to understand that the environment I grew up in held a unique effect on kids. The constant exposure to violence and drugs, the continued stress of worrying about getting shot or robbed while walking down the street, the pressure of gangs, all influenced my ability to inhibit distractions in the classroom and to effectively use working memory skills to succeed. This led me to question if this was a problem for others. After talking to old friends, I quickly understood that living in these environments entailed using executive functions for survival in addition to academics. From there, I knew that I wanted to understand exactly how the executive functions worked in individuals from these environments and what I could do to improve them. My hopes are to understand how cognitive inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility differ in groups with trauma stemming from gangs and prison oppose to people without these experiences and what I can do to help these people succeed, whether in academics or careers.