Nereida Heller (she/her) is a third-year MSW/PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare. Her research centers on poverty governance, public health equity, and substance use policy, with a particular focus on how welfare and behavioral health systems shape outcomes for marginalized populations. Before beginning her doctoral studies, Nereida worked on homelessness and CalWORKs policy at the San Francisco Human Services Agency, served as Senior Data and Evaluation Analyst at the Office of Early Care and Education, and worked in the San Francisco Mayor’s Budget Office with human services and criminal justice departments. She has held research and analysis roles with the UC Berkeley Labor Center, the Multnomah County Housing Authority in Oregon, and the United Nations Development Program in Chile. Nereida earned a master’s degree from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy in 2016.
Poverty governance and social policy; substance use and harm reduction; equity and access in public health systems; intersections of health and carceral systems; frontline service delivery
