I seek to empower scientists, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, in their research and career goals. I believe it is imperative for aspiring and current scientists and academics to know how to “work the system” to get their historically underfunded research supported by the very systems that seek to suppress them.

My work is guided by the ethos that research is meant to be a public good, accessible to all. I believe in developing public health solutions in full collaboration with the communities that are most severely impacted by current policy and structural inequities. I strive to create sexual health policy and infrastructure that supports all communities gaining access to their most pleasurable sex lives.

I am a Behavioral Health Research Scientist, Social Psychologist, and Adjunct Psychology Professor with over ten years of qualitative and quantitative community-based sexual health research experience.

After receiving my PhD in Social Psychology in 2018, I moved to New York City to complete a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Sarit Golub at the Hunter Alliance for Research and Translation (HART).

In 2022, I decided to pursue an alternative path to academia and began my position as a Senior Research Scientist in the NYC Department of Health in the HIV Prevention Research and Evaluation Unit in 2022. In this position, I lead two annual Sexual Health Surveys (Men Who Have Sex with Men & Black and Latina Women) funded by the Centers for Disease Control. I also created the first New York City-wide sexual health behavior survey to identify gaps in sexual health policy and infrastructure for all sexually active New Yorkers, including straight men. I also lead projects utilizing the Symphony Dataset, a New York state-provided dataset of all PrEP (HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis) prescription information for New York City.

In addition to my survey work, I am the Principal Investigator of a National Institutes of Health R21 Research Grant aimed at implementing PrEP in OBGYN settings in order to address inequities in access to PrEP for cisgender women in the United States.