Dr. Amia Nash is a Postdoctoral Scholar at UC Berkeley, School of Public Health, with a specialty area in Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health. She has partnered in community-engaged research focused on health equity with underrepresented youth for the past 8 years. Amia received her Doctor of Public Health from UC Berkeley, School of Public Health and MS in Community Health and Prevention Research from Stanford University School of Medicine. Her current research at UC Berkeley's Innovations 4 Youth Research Hub focuses on statewide social and emotional learning initiatives and youth participatory action research to promote youth well-being. Additionally, she advances diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia and research through her experience mentoring undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented backgrounds in higher education, as well as pursuing an anti-racist approach to community-engaged research and teaching.
Heather Kennedy holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Social Work at the University of Denver, completed in 2015–2019, and a Masters of Public Health (MPH) (2010) from the Colorado School of Public Health. She is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Community & Behavioral Health at the Colorado School of Public Health and is the director of the MSW/MPH dual degree. She is the program manager of the Hub for Justice-Centered Youth Engagement. Her areas of interest are youth participatory action research; adolescent health and well-being; youth-led, arts-based mental health promotion; social justice youth development; intergroup contact theory; health equity; adultism; and community-engaged practice.
Michelle Abraczinskas is an Assistant Professor of Youth Development and Prevention Science in the Department of Family, Youth, and Community Sciences at the University of Florida. Before coming to UF, she completed a NIDA-funded T32 post-doctoral fellowship at the REACH Institute at Arizona State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina's APA-accredited program in 2018. Her research focuses on individual and systems impacts of youth participatory action research, the development and tailoring of youth programming, readiness for youth engaged work, and community-university partnerships.
Ahna Ballonoff Suleiman has been selected as the new executive director of the UC Davis Center for Regional Change (CRC), a hub for innovative, collaborative and action-oriented research. She completed her postdoctoral training and interdisciplinary Doctorate in Public Health at UC Berkeley. She previously spent two years as an assistant professor with the Department of Public Health at California State University, Sacramento, and taught courses in public health and youth development at UC Davis and UC Berkeley. Currently, she is a member of the Yolo County Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Advisory Board, and has served as a chair of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine’s Youth Engagement Committee.
Emily J. Ozer received her Ph.D. in Clinical/Community Psychology from UC Berkeley in 1999. From 2003 to 2009, she was an Assistant Professor of Community Health and Human Development at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health Faculty. Now, she is a Professor of Community Health Sciences at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Her research interests include school-based health promotion and prevention programs, post-traumatic stress disorder and community-based participatory research. She is particularly interested in how the school and classroom contexts in which prevention programs are implemented affect outcomes.
