ÈâÂþÎÝ

Gabi Celia Ortiz, MSW, MA.Ed (Purepecha) is a PhD Candidate at the Boston College School of Social Work and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar. Advised by Dr. Maria Fernanda Piñeros-Leaño, Gabi’s interdisciplinary mixed methods research centers on the health and wellness of Trans Latine, Indigenous, and Black women, focusing on organizational and social psychology within work settings. She collaborates with faculty at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, including Dr. Ashley Lacombe-Duncan, Dr. Kristi Gamarel, and Dr. Sari Reisner, who focus on understanding and mitigating health inequities for trans populations.

Gabi holds an MSW from Boston College School of Social Work, an MA in Higher Education and Organizational Change from UCLA, and dual BA degrees in Political Science and International Development Studies, also from UCLA. 

Megan M’lisa Taylor is a second-year doctoral student in Boston College’s Social Work PhD program, as well as a mother, wife, and sister. Prior to entering her doctoral program, she gained experience working and volunteering with refugee-serving nonprofit organizations in the United States and Canada. Megan’s research focuses on both domestic and international issues relevant to migration. She is passionate about applying global wisdom to the challenges that refugees and migrants face, enhancing refugees’ decision-making power, and reforming multilevel policies and practices to improve the mental health, wellbeing, and life satisfaction of refugees and migrants.

Erika is a first-year PhD student in Social Work at Boston College. She was born and raised in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico, and lived in Tijuana, a city on the northern border with the United States, for nine years before coming to ÈâÂþÎÝ. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa and a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies with a focus on Borders and Migration from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana. Additionally, she has certifications in Public Health, brief therapy, cognitive-behavioral intervention, suicidology, and Ignatian pedagogy. She worked as an academic at Universidad Iberoamericana Tijuana for eight years, there she led the Academic Health Department and founded the Border Human Interaction Laboratory, a space for training in research and action on border and migration phenomena. Her previous experience includes leading three public health research projects with vulnerable populations on the Mexico-US border, serving as Principal Investigator for two of them. Her research topics have focused on public health, mental health, migrant families, gender violence, emotions and return migration, xenophobia towards migrants, and education and socialization of migrant children. During her PhD, she plans to analyze the mental health of migrant families displaced by violence, mediated by cultural elements, throughout their migration journey and upon arrival. In her free time, she enjoys outdoor walks and hikes, spending time with her family, and creating educational content for dissemination via video and podcast.