Margaret Lee(she/her) is a PhD student in Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines immigrant-serving community-based organizations as social welfare innovators, focusing on how care, emotion, culture, and policy intersect in everyday practice. Using qualitative and mixed-methods approaches, she studies how institutional logics and emotional labor shape service delivery and workforce wellbeing—particularly within Southeast Asian and other marginalized communities—and how community organizations translate state programs into...
Reiley Reed, MPH, MSW (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in Social Welfare at UC Berkeley. She studies reproductive health equity and power dynamics in health care and social services. Reiley is currently a T32 National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism predoctoral fellow with the Alcohol Research Group, a graduate student researcher at the Sexual Health and Reproductive Equity Program at UC Berkeley, and an instructor at Berkeley City College.
In her mixed methods dissertation research, Reiley is exploring social worker experiences with and...
Neena Albarus(she/her) is a doctoral student in the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research experience spans structural violence, community development, and the intersections of policy and public health in Jamaica and the Caribbean. Her dissertation explores interventions addressing the commercial sexual exploitation of children in Jamaica. Neena is committed to using data to advance social interventions across the Caribbean and other underrepresented regions.
Leyi (Joy) Zhou(she/her) is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Social Welfare, with a Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies. She received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Tsinghua University in China and her MSW from the...
Michelle Zaragoza, MSW, LCSW (she/ella) is a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley School of Social Welfare. As a first-generation Latina scholar and daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, she received an MSW from CSU, Dominguez Hills, and a BA in Psychology & Social Behavior and Education Sciences from the University of California, Irvine. Grounded in years of experience working directly with Latine and immigrant communities as a community-based mental health therapist in Los Angeles, Michelle’s scholarship explores the...
Laura Pathak is a PhD candidate (combined MSW/PhD program) whose research bridges ethics, technology, and social policy. Her work focuses on data privacy, ownership, and participatory approaches to AI governance, with particular attention to their implications for marginalized populations and social work practice and policy.
Prior to graduate study, Laura served as Program Director at a Berkeley-based community nonprofit supporting immigrant families, as Product Manager at a nonprofit healthcare technology startup developing mobile health interventions for low-...
Mo'e Yaisikana(he/him) is a member of Cou (Indigenous Taiwanese) and a doctoral student at the School of Social Welfare. His intellectual interests concern the interplay between democratic politics and the effectiveness of public care for older adults, particularly how the older population participates in public deliberation and actualizes their citizenship. He examines the construction and hindrance of care policies and the service delivery system, aiming to unravel a comprehensive, systematic, intersecting dynamic form of power to help explain the...
