Madonna Cadiz

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Madonna Cadiz, LCSW is a Doctoral Student in Social Welfare at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Previously, she held research positions at the Program for Torture Victims and the Suicide Prevention Center at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services. In these roles, she contributed to quantitative and qualitative research projects aimed at evaluating client functioning and program efficacy. Her research seeks to expand knowledge on the etiology of mental illness and emotional distress among underserved populations by identifying connections among individual, meso-level, and macro-level factors that may contribute to or exacerbate such conditions. Furthermore, her work aims to center community members’ voices to better understand their own definitions and conceptualizations of mental health diagnoses and symptoms, as well as to identify potentially meaningful interventions that may promote positive mental health among individuals and communities served by social workers.

Natalie Fensterstock

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Natalie Fensterstock is a Ph.D. student in Social Welfare in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She holds a M.A. in Social Sciences and Comparative Education from the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies and a B.A. in English with minors in Secondary Education and Sociology from Wake Forest. Her research focuses on reducing the barriers to learning for our most vulnerable youth populations and on interventions for promoting holistic youth well-being. She is currently working on projects related to ongoing school readiness, teacher leadership and whole child education within the community schooling context, secondary trauma within schools, and developing policy solutions for addressing harm experienced by school staff and faculty during the COVID era. Prior to her time at UCLA, Natalie spent five years teaching middle and high school English and coaching new teachers in the Bay Area in California.

Domonique Henderson

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Domonique Henderson (she/her/hers) is a Compton, California native who graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Baylor University Garland School of Social Work with a Master of Social Work. Currently, she is a first-year doctoral student in UCLA’s Social Welfare program.

Domonique previously taught English in Spain and has traveled to various countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Greece, Germany, Mexico, in addition to some Caribbean islands. Throughout her work in the psychology and social work fields, she has gained significant experience in mental health, substance use, the prison population, children and adolescent population, LGBTQ+ populations, at-risk populations, international populations, and populations from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. During her studies at Baylor University, she interned at The Menninger Clinic which is an inpatient psychiatric hospital, worked as a Research Assistant in the SERVE research program which provided full funding for its students. As a Research Assistant, she assisted in investigating the female incarceration population, their physiological health, mental health, the impact on their families, and submitted a publication. She previously assisted in researching African caregivers and assisted with an NIH and NIAA funded study with the Choices4Health program with UT-Austin.

Domonique’s research interests are gendered racism and its implications on the mental health of Black women and girls. She is a firm believer in being a lifetime learner and enjoys opportunities to expand her knowledge. Currently, she is a part of research projects focused on Black youth civic engagement, a validation study with Casey Family Programs, experiences of ageism by youth of color, and she was awarded funding by the Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. Social Justice Award for her study focused on the invisibility of Black girls in schools.

Along with clinical and research experience, Domonique values community. Watching mentees take tools and wisdom passed down to them as they navigate their journey as a woman is an amazing process. She genuinely enjoys guiding youth in their journey of growth. She has experience with mentoring marginalized youth and she recently founded a nonprofit organization, CRWND Incorporated, which centers mentorship and mental health for Black girls. Outside of professional and community interests, she relishes reading about/watching historical period dramas, especially about monarchs in Europe. Toni Morrison and Ta-Nehisi Coates books are some of her favorites. She also enjoys listening to R&B artists such as Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker, Toni Braxton, especially Lauryn Hill.

Taylor Reed

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Taylor is currently a doctoral candidate at UCLA. Her research focuses on the collateral consequences of the carceral system on system-impacted Black young adults, particularly how policies influence the re-entry experience of Black young adults from a life-course perspective. This includes studying the socioeconomic environment in which system-impacted Black young adults were raised. She hopes that her work will allow for policy makers and stakeholders to comprehensively understand how the carceral system extends deeply into the lives of Black individuals as well as identify vulnerable areas that can serve as intervention points to help mitigate recidivism rates and the likelihood of incarceration among urban community members. Additionally, she would like to determine how to design and scale up effective policies that address the challenges of reentry by equipping Black young adults with the necessary tools to meet their needs.

Taylor Reed was born in New York but raised in Dallas, Texas which gave her mixed perspective as to both the social and political aspect of how one’s race impacted their life experiences. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Global Public Health and Sociology with a minor in Chemistry from New York University. As a Black first-generation American woman, Taylor learned the many ways in which systems operate against the success of not only women, but specifically Black women. Prior to attending UCLA, she worked on projects that examined violence throughout major cities in the United States and the impact of incarceration and community violence on Black individuals.

Presently, Taylor engages in research with UCLA’s BRITE Center conducting research and preparing manuscripts for publication centered around incarceration and life hardships of Black men, as well as NYU’s Silver School of Social Work where she is analyzing the conceptualization of trauma among racial minority youth exposed to community violence. She concurrently holds the role of co-principal investigator for a research project supported by UCLA’s Initiative to Study Hate. This project involves a comprehensive analysis of the experiences of Black and Latinx  youth organizers within gun violence prevention organizations.

Vanessa Warri

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Vanessa Warri is a Nigerian-American community-based researcher, strategist, and advocate, committed to the liberation, empowerment, and safety of Black transgender women, queer and transgender people of color, and all communities existing at the various intersections of oppression. For over 12 years Vanessa has provided empowerment based direct services and peer education for transgender communities, LGBTQQIA+ young people, and system-involved individuals.

Vanessa worked as a research associate for the UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, where she facilitated several behavioral health interventions aimed to improve transgender women’s engagement with a primary healthcare provider, and led community-based research efforts in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (LACDMH) and the Arming Minorities Against Addiction and Disease (AMAAD) Institute, exploring the experiences of Black LGBTQ+ people and their mental health needs.

As a 2018 Point Foundation undergraduate scholar, Vanessa attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), receiving a double major in Anthropology and Sociology and leading the development and implementation of the first QTBIPOC Student Experiences Survey through the UCLA LGBT Campus Resource Center in 2019. As a Social Welfare Ph.D. Student, Vanessa hopes to be able to support the next generation of Black queer and transgender people in their educational attainments by creating initiatives that center their lived experience and expertise in research about them. Her research will primarily focus on peer-developed and driven social empowerment interventions for Black transgender and gender diverse (TGD) populations that address social determinants of health outside of the healthcare engagement realm. Vanessa is interested in exploring how utilizing social research education and community participatory action research (PAR) can improve mental health outcomes, increase self-efficacy, and facilitate pathways to greater educational attainments for historically excluded populations.

Emily M. Waters

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Emily M. Waters is an incoming Doctoral Student in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and works as a Policy and Research Advisor at the Transgender Law Center. Emily has extensive experience conducting community-based research and policy advocacy on issues related to queer and trans rights, with a particular focus on domestic, sexual, and state violence. She focuses on developing and advocating for policy solutions that move power and resources into community and challenge systemic oppression rather than reinforce the carceral state. Her work can be found in The New York Times, HuffPost, and The Advocate. 

As a Doctoral Student, Emily is interested in exploring the social and political regulation of gender-segregated services and environments (e.g., domestic violence shelters, bathrooms, or sports teams). She would like to examine the social norms, attitudes, and beliefs that uphold the perceived need for gender-segregated spaces. For example, gender essentialism and benevolent sexism which uphold the perceived need for segregation for ‘women’s’ safety. She is particularly interested in the association between these beliefs and implicit and explicit prejudice toward transgender and gender nonbinary people. Finally, she would like to explore how people from seemingly different political affiliations (e.g., conservative and feminist) find alignment in their political goal of maintaining gender-segregated spaces. 

Previously, Emily served as an Adjunct Professor at the School of Social Work at Columbia University, where she taught courses on Program Evaluation and working with LGBTQ Communities. She holds a Masters of Social Work and a Masters of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an undergraduate degree in International Relations and Human Rights from the University of Southern California.

Personal website: Emilywaters.com

Juan C. Jauregui

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Juan C. Jauregui, MSW, MPH is a 3rd year doctoral student in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. His research is focused on understanding and preventing suicide among LGBTQ+ young people in low and middle-income countries using community-engaged approaches. Specifically, his work explores the social, economic, and environmental factors that impact the mental health and well-being of LGBTQ+ communities.

Juan recently co-led the launch of a national survey in Peru and the Philippines focused on LGBTQ+ youth mental health. Before entering the doctoral program at UCLA, Juan worked with the Resilience + Resistance Collective at the University of Michigan School of Public Health where he was involved in LGBTQ+ mental health projects in the U.S., Kenya, and Zambia. He also worked with the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Program at Michigan Medicine where he focused on examining health inequities for LGB people with bipolar disorder. Juan’s previous professional experiences also include working as a Research Associate for the UCLA Adolescent Trials Network and as a Crisis Worker for a national suicide hotline.

Juan earned his BS in Psychobiology from UCLA in 2017 and Master of Social Work and Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan in 2021. Juan is a recipient of the NIH-funded LEAD Global Training Fellowship at Washington University St. Louis, as well as a recipient of the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.

Selected Publications:

Jadwin-Cakmak, L., Jauregui, J. C., McDowell, H., Davis, K., LaBoy, R., Johnson, G. L., Hosek, S., Harper, G. W. (2023) “They’re not feeling the love they need to feel”: HIV stigma and other intersecting stigmas among Black gay and bisexual men and transgender women in house and ball communities. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health. doi: 10.1080/19359705.2023.2200375

Lewis, K. A., Jadwin-Cakmak, L., Walimbwa, J., Ogunbajo, A., Jauregui, J. C., Onyango, D. P.,  Moore, D. M.,  Johnson, G. L., Odero, W., Harper, G. W. (2023). “You’ll Be Chased Away”: Sources, Experiences, and Effects of Violence and Stigma among Gay and Bisexual Men in Kenya. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20, 2825. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20042825

Jauregui, J. C., Rucah, C., Crawford, J., Jadwin-Cakmak, L., Concehla, C., Onyango, D. P., Harper, G. W. Experiences of Violence and Mental Health Concerns among Sexual and Gender Minority Adults in Western Kenya. LGBT Health. 2021 Oct;8(7):494-501. doi: 10.1089/lgbt.2020.0495. Epub 2021 Aug 31. PMID: 34463158.

Julia Lesnick

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Julia Lesnick is an emerging scholar of youth justice. Her research agenda aims to shift policy, practice, and public narratives investing in youth to pursue a more just society. She takes a multi-disciplinary approach grounded in social welfare, sociology and developmental psychology to examine the following areas: young people’s experiences with policy advocacy and implementation; the use of evidence to inform juvenile system change; emerging alternative models of youth justice practice; and public and political narratives about youth justice.

As a second-year doctoral student at UCLA, Julia’s research focuses on juvenile legal system change. Some of her recent and ongoing projects include a first-authored critical review of paradigms influencing national trends of juvenile system reform, leading a qualitative study of stakeholders’ visions for the future of youth justice, conducting a comprehensive synthesis of evidence on credible messenger mentoring with youth in the juvenile system, collecting data for evaluation of a youth re-entry program, and serving as a research consultant for the state of California in the implementation of juvenile justice reform legislation.

In addition to her research at UCLA, Julia is a practitioner and advocate for justice. Prior to UCLA, she worked as a program analyst at the NYC Division of Youth and Family Justice and in community-based social services, as a therapist and case manager for youth on probation, and as a teacher in prison-based college degree program. She received her Bachelor’s of Science in Human Development from Cornell University in 2018, and her Master’s of Social Work from UCLA in 2023.

Ultimately, Julia aspires to a career conducting research that advances equitable, youth-centered, and community-led change in youth justice policy and practice. She aims to contribute innovative, applied research that bridges organizing, science, policy, and practice to promote socially just youth policy.