My work focuses on how communities and regions produce and disrupt disparities in youth well-being, with emphasis on disparities associated with race/ethnicity, immigration, socio-economic status and geographic location. My interest in youth well-being situates my activity at the intersection of educational reform, public health, youth development and community development. I ground my work conceptually at the nexus of theories of development in social ecological contexts, critical human geographers’ analyses of space and place as socially produced, and critical race theory.

Early in my career I co-founded a non-profit intermediary organization that supported youth participatory action research, evaluation and planning among under-represented populations and places. Since joining academia, I have built on my training in qualitative and participatory methods to incorporate quantitative and geo-spatial analyses. A current strand of my research entails exploring and supporting school, neighborhood and regional scale approaches to changing youth conditions that integrate young people- particularly those marginalized based on race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, immigration status and/or system involvement– as mobilizers, healers, georeferenced data users and knowledge-producers. I pursue this work with community collaborators in California and Nepal. I also bring my background in the areas of educational equity, community-engaged research, pedagogies of youth civic engagement, and global learning to directing the campus Global Education for All initiative as Associate Vice Provost, Global Education for All within Global Affairs.