UCLA Luskin students to be profiled on new website.

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.

Kimberly Fuentes

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Kimberly Fuentes, MSW is a recent graduate of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in Social Welfare. She is currently a first year PhD student in Social Welfare at Luskin where she studies the impacts of criminalization on sex working communities, the ways they resist criminalization, and the role that social work can play in uplifting this resistance. She hopes to utilize participatory action research and art-based methods to identify the alternative systems of community care that are used to mitigate and resist the forces of the police state and theorize the state from the vantage point of sex workers. She serves on the board of directors at the Sex Worker Outreach Project – Los Angeles (SWOP-LA) where she leads a nationwide support group for current and former sex workers and provides direct support to street-based workers through a harm reduction framework. Kimberly is a student affiliate of the California Center for Population Research (CCPR) and a recipient of the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. She is currently a research assistant at the UCLA Hub for Health Intervention, Policy and Practice where she works on research studies exploring the effect of criminalization on violence and victimization of sex workers.

Kimberly earned her Master of Social Welfare in Social and Economic Justice with a certificate in Global Health and Social Services. During her time in the MSW program, Kimberly received the Graduate Opportunity Fellowship (GOFP) and served as a Luskin Leadership Fellow at the Office of Child Protection (OCP). Her completed research capstone, “Revolutionizing Community Under the Red Umbrella: Intersectional Inquiry with Sex Workers on Protective Factors in Los Angeles, CA”, received awards from the Center for the Study of Women’s Black Feminism Initiative, UCLA Lewis Center for Policy Research, Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. Social Justice Award, and a departmental award for outstanding research.

She is a proud first-generation student whose family immigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico. Prior to UCLA, she earned a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Geography with a minor in Math and Science education from UC Santa Barbara.

 

Andres F. Ramirez

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Andrés F. Ramirez is a writer, curator and cultural producer, working in the realm of architecture  urban planning and design. He is the co-founder of PLANE–SITE, an agency devoted to the production and dissemination of original content for architecture and the built environment. Andrés also works as an independent consultant in architecture and urban planning projects, with an emphasis on social processes and public space. 

Andrés is Director of the non-profit research platform Aerial Futures, an organization devoted to cultural exchange surrounding the architecture of flight. He was the curator of Garden City Mega City, Urban Ecosystems of WOHA, at the Museum of the City of Mexico (2017); curator of the first contribution of the Seychelles to the XV Venice Architecture Biennale (2016) Between Two Waters, Searching for Expression in the Seychelles, and co- curator for Medellín, Topography of Knowledge at the Aedes Architecture Forum (2015).

Sarah Soakai

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Malo e lelei (Hello, in Tongan). Aloha (Hello, in Hawaiian). I originally hail from the Ko’olauloa Mountains and North Shores of Oahu, Hawai’i with ancestral ties to the South Pacific Islands of Tonga. I look at Community Development and Social Policy as it relates to communities on and in the margins. Current research efforts examine third sector community-based faith-based organizations and institutions and their role in social service delivery during and post COVID times. In particular, churches are central anchor institutions among Pacific Islander communities in diaspora. Research and planning with these indigenous communities means looking at their association and relationship with their faith-based organization and institution. Previous research efforts had looked at the effects of city ordinance policies concerning people experiencing homelessness that prohibit lying (sleeping) and sitting on public sidewalks, parks, beaches, and other public spaces. Third sector nonprofit community-based organizations are at the forefront of homelessness issues. And the work continues with improving trauma-informed care and alignment with state services to minimize bureaucracy and duplication.

In addition to research, I currently TA for the Urban Planning department and the Public Affairs Undergraduate program. Before my tenure as a doctoral student, I oversaw the Speech and Debate program, taught tenth grade English, eleventh and twelfth grade AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) college prep, and also did some college and career counseling at a Title 1 public high school for several years.

Given the current moment, I look forward to meeting you via email and/or Zoom, and hope to meet up soon in person.

Livier Gutiérrez

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Prior to entering the doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, Livier worked on applied research and direct-service work to make community violence prevention services more responsive to girls. She served as the director of programs at Alliance for Girls, the nation’s largest alliance of girl-serving organizations, as the director of violence prevention at Enlace Chicago, a community-based organization serving La Villita (a.k.a., Chicago’s Little Village community); and a researcher at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a national applied research non-profit and policy organization.  

Livier earned her master’s degree in social work with a concentration in violence prevention from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and bachelor’s degree in sociology and social welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. Livier’s undergraduate research explored the ideology, structure, and recruitment strategies of The Minutemen, a militant xenophobic organization (a.k.a., a gang). As a master’s student, Livier’s thesis was an applied research project that explored girls’ involvement and association with youth-led street organizations (a.k.a., gangs) and resulted in a violence-prevention program for girls. Through community work, Livier has seen how school, family, and other systems take key aspects of a girls’ identity—like race, immigration status, sexual orientation, and gender identity—to impose social and economic constraints on them. Despite the constraints placed on them, Livier has also seen how girls use their power to make systems safer for themselves and others. Livier is interested in leveraging mixed methods, with a focus on action research, and theory to highlight the experiences and stories of girls, especially their ability to change their ecology and improve safety for themselves and others. In doing so, Livier hopes to advance social work’s violence prevention theory, methods, and practice.  

Samuel Speroni

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Sam Speroni is a doctoral student in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning and a researcher with the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.  He completed his master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning, also at UCLA, in June 2020.  Sam is advised by Dr. Evelyn Blumenberg and Dr. Brian D. Taylor.

Sam’s primary research interest lies at the intersection of transportation, education, and new mobility, where he looks for ways to improve equitable access to educational opportunities for vulnerable and disadvantaged student populations.  His research extends to many other aspects of travel behavior and transportation systems, all with an emphasis on equity.  Sam’s recent applied planning research project analyzing high school students’ ridehail trips to school for HopSkipDrive (full report | policy brief) received the national Neville A. Parker Award for outstanding master’s capstone in transportation policy and planning from the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC).

Sam is a Future Leaders Development fellow of the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington, D.C., and in 2020 he was named the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center (PSR UTC) outstanding student of the year.  He is also the recipient of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Graduate Fellowship (2019 and 2020) and the Intelligent Transportation Systems California / California Transportation Foundation joint graduate scholarship (2020).

Prior to UCLA, Sam was a high school English teacher and school administrator in Charlotte, North Carolina, through Teach for America.  Originally from New England, Sam grew up in Massachusetts and earned his bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies with honors from Brown University in 2011, where he was also captain of the varsity swimming & diving team.