I am bee. My parents immigrated to the United States in the early 1970's from Mexico. I was born and raised in California and identify as a Mexican- American, cisgender, heterosexual female. As a child, I studied in Guadalajara, Mexico for five years. I am fluent in Spanish and consider English my second language. Recently I have started to learn Haitian Creole to better serve the patients we support at my workplace. I am married and have two dogs. In my free time, I enjoy nature, biking, reading and photography (the images in these pages are my work!). I am a fifth year doctoral student at the University of Central Florida, where I study medical sociology.
I completed my undergraduate education at California State University Northridge, where I attained baccalaureate degrees in psychology and child development and a minor in human sexuality. I completed my Master's degree in experimental psychology in the research methods and statistics track at the University of Cincinnati. My formal statistical training was largely focused on non-linear statistics and multivariate analysis and modeling. In addition to my formal education and research training, I have 11 years of combined experience in business management and the non-profit sector. For the past ten years, I have supported physician and medical student research. My experiences, across several laboratories and scientific settings, have trained me to conduct, manage and supervise a multitude of research projects.
At the age of 8, I taught my four-year-old sister how to read! I guess you can say that I discovered my passion for teaching at a very young age. I did not discover my love for research until much later, but once I learned that I could combine teaching, learning, and research into one job, I knew that I would pursue a career in as an educator. Currently, I teach research methods and statistics in the graduate medical curriculum at Orlando Health and mentor and support research efforts of medical students, residents and fellows. I have also taught undergraduate courses in statistics, medical sociology and cognition. As I have gotten older (and wiser) I have learned that teaching can happen in many contexts, thus currently I spend a lot of time teaching patients how to advocate for themselves when navigating the healthcare system.
Broadly, my own research focus and interests are in health, health access and social inequalities in health and medicine. More specifically, my research agenda is focused on social correlates of health that I see as associated with health equity and justice, such as race, class, language, gender, and gender identity.
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” -Frida Khalo