2021-2022 COE Ambassadors
The Student Ambassador Program is a leadership opportunity for students to serve and represent the Women’s Health, Gender and Empowerment (WHGE) COE among the student population and larger community. Specific roles of Student Ambassadors include identifying and raising awareness about events related to WHGE on campus and in the community, participating in monthly webinar meetings, working with COE Faculty Ambassadors on campus and supporting COE programs to address campus-based sexual assault and dating violence.
2021-2022 Women's Health, Gender and Empowerment Student Ambassadors
Arezoo Kalan
UC Los Angeles
Human Biology and Society
Arezoo is very passionate about global health, especially women’s empowerment through education and access to healthcare! She is currently doing research in a lab in the UCLA AIDS Institute and is a member in the Carceral Ecologies lab where she researches deaths in police custody. For the past 4 years, she has been a member of the Pediatric AIDS Coalition at UCLA.
Arianna Macias
UC Santa Barbara
Psychology
Arianna studied global health in Oaxaca, with a focus on health inequity, women/community health, maternal mortality. She is currently working as a CNA and working towards becoming a public health nurse with an emphasis on women’s health. Her interests are in health equity and how the presence of socioeconomic inequalities plays a role in not only in one’s health but the healthcare that is available to them.
Ashley Mitchell
UC San Francisco
Reproductive Health & Justice
Ashley is inspired by intersectional feminism and decolonization, with primary research interests in global reproductive health, wellness, and justice. She is a public health educator, practitioner, and researcher who earned a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota. She is currently a (first gen!) Global Health Sciences doctoral student at the University of California, San Francisco.
Brooke Tran
UC San Diego
Public Health, Epidemiology and General Biology
Brooke is interested in reproductive health, specifically involving HIV/STDs and domestic violence, as well as maternal health and inequities in maternal care experienced by womxn. She is a student intern at the Family Health Centers of San Diego, specifically working with the Gilead STAT team helping research Hepatitis C Virus treatments and the unhoused population/people who inject drugs in Downtown San Diego. She hopes to become an epidemiologist in the future, focusing on infectious diseases.
Cecilia Eldridge
UC Santa Barbara
Biochemistry
Cecilia is a Pre-Chemistry major on the Biochemistry track and a Feminist Studies Minor - Pre-Medicine with plans to pursue a career as an OB/GYN. She is currently working as a research assistant to Professor Laury Oaks at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Feminist Studies Department.
Christine Nguyen
UC Irvine
Public Health
Christine is interested in understanding the cultural and contextual factors related to health access and outcomes. Her current research experience includes serving as a research fellow with the non-profit, Swipe Out Hunger, where she leads data analysis to help assess food insecurity prevalence across U.S. college campuses and is a lead researcher at UC Irvine conducting HPV and Hep B behavioral research among Vietnamese American young adults. She is passionate about understanding and addressing health disparities through research and advocacy.
Claire Amabile
UC Los Angeles
Social Welfare and Public Health
Claire is a Graduate Student Researcher at the Fielding School of Public Health pursuing dual degrees in Master of Public Health (MPH) and Master of Social Welfare (MSW). She Manages the Global College Campus Violence Prevention Network and the UC Speaks Up study. Her research interests are in assessing the connection between intimate partner violence and abuse against animals.
Dalena Ngo
UC Merced
History
Dalena Ngo works at the intersection of healthcare equity, diversity, and the university, looking at how academic health centers work to provide care to the communities they are situated in. She is passionate about ensuring that quality care is provided to all students in the UC system, particularly those that are in underserved regions. She is currently at work on publications regarding psycho-social measures of risk behavior to COVID-19 restrictions.
Donna Pham
UC San Diego
Public Health
Donna is interested in women's health, education, and community engagement so that women can feel empowered to make informed decisions about their health. She is a perinatal clinical research assistant at UCSD Health, where she recruits women with high-risk pregnancies for placenta clinical studies to better understand how to manage these pregnancies from a pathology standpoint. Her future career plans include going to medical school to become an OB/GYN and to specialize in maternal fetal medicine.
Edgar Murillo-Miranda
UC Merced
Psychology and Public Health
Edgar is a fourth-year first-generation student at UC Merced, pursuing a double major in Psychology and Public Health. In the future, they wish to work to improve mental health outcomes of trans and non-binary youth by doing research and working in LGBTQ+ mental health clinics. Some of their interests include makeup artistry, social media marketing, and small business management.
Eniola Owoyele
UC Berkeley
Integrative Biology (emphasis in Human Biology) and Global Poverty and Practice
Eniola is one of two Student Assistants in the UCGHI Ambassador Program. She is passionate about womxn’s health and reproductive rights, especially within BIPOC communities, and hopes to become an ObGyn. She is a part of an organization called Generation Flow, which seeks to bring awareness to period poverty and menstrual rights and has partnered with several organizations to ensure that girls in local communities and various low-income countries have access to sanitary products. Eniola has also worked to bring awareness to gender-based violence on the African continent with the UC Berkeley Nigerian Student Association chapter.
Eunhee Park
UC Los Angeles
Community Health Sciences
Eunhee aspires to promote gender equity and empower women’s right through her research in public health. She is interested in methods and strategies to facilitate the uptake of evidence-based practices related to social determinants of health, violence, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV. She is the principal co-investigator of the Double Jeopardy study examining Asian college students’ experiences of sexual violence and xenophobia during COVID-19.
Kalani Phillips
UC Irvine
Public Health
Kalani interned with UCI HR Wellness & Engagement to create an employee wellness guide so that UCI can cultivate a culture of whole-person wellness to all employees. She is currently researching adaptation strategies to combat vaccine hesitation on social media. She is also Chair of the UCI Student Center Board of Advisors, President of the UCI PH Alumni Board, and a member of UC Survivors + Allies.
Linhdan Nguyen
UC Santa Cruz
Human Biology
Through her personal experiences and her coursework, Linhdan has a desire to promote equity and justice throughout the health industry. She is very interested in advocating for women in society whether that be by promoting their own voices, fighting for positions in the workplace, or bringing attention to the complexities that are women's health. She is also currently employed by the UCSC Disability Resource Center as a notetaker.
Lucia Vitale
UC Santa Cruz
Politics
Lucia Vitale is an interdisciplinary global health scholar who uses comparative political science methods, theories in sociology, and geography to explore multi-scale effects of global health governance and primary healthcare access. While her research is geographically located along the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, non-state transnational decision-making spaces are central to her work.
Micaela Davis
UC Santa Barbara
Global Studies, Linguistics, and Education
Micaela is passionate about promoting inclusivity in media, literature, and education. She has experience working in the public sector as an intern for the City of Carson (Finance Department and City Clerk's Office), UCSB's Office of Black Student Development, and freelance editing as well as social media outreach for various on-campus organizations. She is interested in social justice-centered research surrounding marginalized populations in media representation and healthcare policies.
Nayelie Benitez Santos
UC San Francisco
Nursing
Nayelie is interested in increasing access to reproductive and sexual health services for underserved communities. Her background is in maternal and child health and educating youth on accessing reproductive and sexual health resources. She is focused on becoming informed to help create policies that reduce barriers for women when seeking health care services for themselves and their families.
Nina Suh-Toma
UC San Diego
Global Health
Nina wants to address health inequities for marginalized communities through law and policy. She interned with the Center on Gender Equity and Health on UC Speaks Up, a qualitative research study to assess the campus environment for sexual violence prevention at multiple UC campuses and is now training to become a Sexual Assault Resource Advocate with the Center for Community Solutions.
Ritz Tolentino
UC Davis
Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior
Ritz is passionate about advocacy centered around culturally informed education and healthcare, with interests in destigmatizing mental health, promoting gender/LGBTQ+ experiences, and serving underserved communities. He currently serves people experiencing homelessness in Sacramento at the Willow Clinic and promotes mental well-being for youth as a member of My State Of Mind, a mental health non-profit organization. He believes everyone has the power to enact change and hopes to empower others to advocate for themselves.
Rujuta Sathe
UC Los Angeles
Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology
Rujuta is passionate about advancing women’s health and gender equity through culturally inclusive education efforts. She has previously taught vocational activities at an institution in India for women with mental disability and is currently writing a nutrition guide for expecting mothers in rural Indian villages. She recently founded a student organization at UCLA called Pages for Pediatrics which writes and illustrates children’s storybooks on childhood illnesses and distributes them to children’s hospitals nationwide.
Sara Moaddeli
UC San Diego
Global Health
Sara is interested in women's health, heathy policy, nutrition, and environmental justice. She shadowed an OB/GYN during the summer and it was a meaningful experience that has shaped her career goals and what still needs to be done in women's health. She is an intern on the new trolley in San Diego where she is assessing changes in multiple health, equity, and climate related outcomes during the COVID-19 recovery period.
Sarah Alkhatib
UC Irvine
Epidemiology
Sarah is an international student from Saudi Arabia and grew up abroad for most of her life which included attending school in South Korea and Japan. She loves studying and working in the field of Public Health because we can help and reach many communities in various ways. She is currently involved in on-campus research projects such as, Muslim Women in Healthcare Initiative, UCI's Wellness and Engagement center, and serves as a mentor to undergraduate research students.
Sean Sugai
UC Los Angeles
Human Biology and Society, Anthropology and Public Health
Sean is researching trauma-informed and survivor-centered interventions to reduce gender-based and intimate partner violence in the LGBTQ+ and AAPI community in California. He is also exploring how the history of immigration, labor exploitation, plantation economics, Asian settler colonialism, and White supremacy racializes our built environments and sustains anti-Blackness in the Pilipinx, Pilipinx-American, and broader AAPI community in Hawai`i. Sean integrates public health, urban planning, and ethnographic field methods to better understand the relationship between racial and environmental (in)justice and violence prevention infrastructure.
Sheherbano
UC Berkeley
Comparative Literature
Sheherbano is interested in issues pertaining to immigration, racism and racial bias and discrimination, sustainable living and eco-friendly measures, and mental and physical health. She has participated in fellowships focused on incarceration and prison system injustices (Young Justice Fellowship) and an URGE fellowship about reproductive rights. She is currently working with Cal MSA's Political Action Committee to raise awareness about and funding for social and political disparities and plight.
Shirelle Mizrahi
UC Los Angeles
Public Health and Community Health Sciences
Shirelle is a Masters of Public Health Candidate at the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA. Her research interests surround sexual/reproductive, mental, and LGBTQ+ health. She is currently a Graduate Student Researcher with Dr. Jennifer Wagman and a Research and Evaluation Intern with Dr. Dallas Swendeman. Her current work explores global sexual violence prevention and response in university campuses, HIV prevention and PrEP acceptability among sex workers in West Bengal, India, and reproductive decision making.
Sophie Siadatpour
UC Santa Barbara
Global Studies
This past year, Sophie volunteered with Jhpiego, a Johns Hopkins affiliate that works towards the betterment of women's health globally and has also interned with KIND, a nonprofit that provides legal/social services to unaccompanied migrant children. There she learned valuable information about the U.S. immigration system.
Yifan Mao
UC Los Angeles
Medicine
Yifan is an MS1 at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She majored in Biological Sciences and Neuroscience at The University of Chicago, where she was also on the varsity swim team. She is involved in Mobile Clinic Project, Special Olympics, APAMSA Community Health, DGSOM Medical Student Council, and bariatric surgery research. Her interests include health disparities among minority populations locally and globally, global surgery, and women’s health.
