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.

Vanessa Warri

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Vanessa Warri, MSW, is a community-based scholar, strategist, and advocate dedicated to advancing the health and wellbeing of Black, Indigenous, and transgender, and gender-expansive (TGE) people of color. With over a decade of experience providing direct services and education for multiple vulnerable populations — namely LGBTQ youth, foster youth, and system-involved individuals — Vanessa is committed to addressing the systemic inequities that impact these communities.

As a Ph.D. student in Social Welfare, Vanessa’s research focuses on the education-health relationship across the lifespan of transgender and gender-expansive populations of color. Her work explores how early educational disruptions—particularly those stemming from cisnormative exclusion and violence in schools—create long-term barriers to health and wellbeing. Vanessa employs a life course perspective to understand how these early experiences affect mental health, access to healthcare, and overall life outcomes from adolescence through late adulthood.Through her research, Vanessa seeks to develop nonmedical, education-based interventions that address health disparities and promote psychological wellbeing within marginalized communities. Her work critiques traditional health models for vulnerable populations by advocating for approaches that connect upstream social determinants, such as education, to downstream health outcomes.

In addition to her academic work, Vanessa is an experienced community-based researcher and consultant, providing strategic support to nonprofit and corporate organizations committed to equity and inclusion. Her work is grounded in a deep commitment to empowering marginalized communities and transforming systems of care to be more inclusive and affirming.

Currently Vanessa is working with the APA Taskforce on Violence Against Educators to analyze data regarding the safety concerns and policy recommendations of a national sample of LGBTQ school personnel. She also works with the UCLA Hub for Health Intervention, Policy, and Practice (HHIPP) to adapt an existing evidence-based intervention to improve HIV outcomes along the continuum of care for transgender women of color with lived sex work experience in Los Angeles County.

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 PhD candidate in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. His research focuses on population mental health among LGBTQ+ populations, with particular attention to stigma, suicidality, and HIV care engagement. Grounded in social work and public health, his work examines how structural and psychosocial processes shape mental health outcomes across global and U.S. contexts using community-engaged, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches.

His dissertation, “Cuida Positivo: An Exploratory Study on Stigma, Mental Well-Being, and HIV Treatment Engagement Among Sexual and Gender Minority Young People Living with HIV in Peru”, draws on qualitative data to examine how structural stigma and social conditions shape mental health and HIV care engagement. This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health through the Fogarty UCGHI GloCal Health Fellowship and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. His work aims to advance community-based services and interventions that respond to the mental health and HIV care needs of vulnerable populations within resource-limited settings.

Throughout his doctoral training, Juan has advanced a global mental health research agenda that includes co-leading the launch of national surveys on LGBTQ+ youth mental health in Peru and the Philippines in collaboration with The Trevor Project. His work has been published in journals such as Global Public Health, Archives of Sexual Behavior, LGBT Health, and the American Journal of Community Psychology. He is a recipient of the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and the NIMHD T37 LEAD Global Training Fellowship.

Prior to entering the doctoral program at UCLA, Juan earned his MSW and MPH from the University of Michigan, where he worked with the Resilience + Resistance Collective on LGBTQ+ mental health and sexual health projects in the United States, Kenya, Zambia, and the Dominican Republic. His professional background also includes research roles with the UCLA Adolescent Trials Network and as a trained crisis counselor with a national suicide prevention hotline.

Juan is a Mexican-American, first-generation college student. He earned his BS in Psychobiology from UCLA in 2017.

Selected Publications:

Jauregui, J. C., Hong, G., Garner, A., Howell, S., Holloway, I. W. (2025). Sexual Behavior, App Use, and Venue Comfort During COVID-19: A Global Study of Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men. The Journal of Sex Research, 1-7. doi: 10.1080/00224499.2025.2585071

Jauregui, J. C., Lewis, K. A., Moore, D. M., Ogunbajo, A., Odero, W., Wambaya, J., Onyango, D. P., Jadwin-Cakmak, L., Harper, G. W. (2025). “It kills the freedom or the spirit of people being who they are”: Impact of Sexuality-Based Stigma and Discrimination on the Lives of Gay and Bisexual Men in Kenya. Global Public Health, 20(1). doi: 10.1080/17441692.2025.2489713

Jauregui, J. C., Harper, G. W. (2025) LGBTQ+ Cultural Sensitivity Training for Mental Health Professionals in the United States. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 54, 1309-1315. doi: 10.1007/s10508-025-03132-3

León-Morris, F.D., Reyes-Diaz, E.M., Jauregui, J.C., Konda, K.A., Taylor, A.B., Jarrett, B.A., Lee, W.Y., Muñoz, G., & Nath, R. (2024). 2024 Perú national report on the mental health of LGBTQ+ young people. West Hollywood, California: The Trevor Project. Available at: https://thetrevorproject.org/survey-international/pe/2024/en/

Jauregui, J. C., Hong, C., Assaf, R. D., Cunningham, N. J., Krueger, E. A., Flynn, R., Holloway, I. W. (2024). Examining Factors Associated with Cannabis Use Among Sexual and Gender Minority (SGM) and non-SGM Emerging Adults in California. LGBT Health. doi: 10.1089/lgbt.2023.0050

Jauregui, J. C., Mwochi, C. R., Crawford, J., Jadwin-Cakmak, L., Okoth, C., Onyango, D. P., & Harper, G. W. (2021). Experiences of violence and mental health concerns among sexual and gender minority adults in western Kenya. LGBT Health, 8(7), 494-501. doi: 10.1089/lgbt.2020.0495.

Julia Lesnick

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Julia Lesnick is a doctoral candidate in social work whose scholarship centers on youth justice and the governance of youth crime. Her research investigates how policies and practices are developed, implemented, and experienced within systems that respond to young people in contact with the law. She focuses on institutional, organizational, and fiscal reforms to youth justice systems, and examines how these policy and practice changes impact youth and public safety.

Her dissertation, “Who governs a decentralized system of youth justice? Realignment, reform, and the battle to reimagine youth justice in California,” uses an in-depth case study of state and county implementation of California’s major 2020 juvenile justice reform bill. The project examines core questions around the governance, power, ideology and logistics of closing state youth prisons, and shifting towards a local model of custody and care for young people with serious, violent convictions.

Julia’s work also explores the broader social, economic, and political forces shaping youth justice. This includes research examining innovative policy and practice interventions such as guaranteed income programs and credible messenger mentoring. Additionally, she examines youth and community organizing to build power and shape youth justice reform agendas, including leading a study of youth voice with formerly incarcerated young people.

Julia is also a practitioner and advocate for justice. After earning her MSW in 2023, Julia became a restorative justice mediator. In this role, she guides youth, families, and harmed parties through structured dialogues aimed at accountability, healing, and diverting young people from formal system involvement. Prior to UCLA Julia served as an AmeriCorps VISTA at the NYC Division of Youth and Family Justice, and taught in a prison-based college degree program during her undergraduate studies at Cornell University.

Sawyer Hogenkamp

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Sawyer completed an M.Ed. in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University. He also holds a M.Ed. and B.Ed. from Queen’s University, and B.A. from University of Waterloo, majoring in Music, and Human Geography & Environmental Management. He is pursuing a PhD to further the study of relational youth violence and school climate to encompass under-supervised contexts within and outside of school grounds, such as in neighborhoods, virtual spaces, or on school buses. He serves as a consultant with an organization in Canada that trains school bus drivers on bullying prevention and mental health awareness. He’s also engaged in supporting social emotional learning in underserved populations domestically (urban and rural America), and abroad (urban and rural China). Research skills include both qualitative and quantitative analysis as well as mixed methods, having participated with interdisciplinary research groups collaborating with Canadian Federal and Provincial Government Agencies, Universities, and private organizations. Currently Sawyer is working with the APA Taskforce on Violence Against Educators, organizing and analyzing data and policy of qualitative data from school psychologists, social workers, counselors, administrators, teachers, and school staff.