Academic Bio

In 2003, I graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with B.A.s in Political Science and Interdisciplinary Studies.  From there, I pursued graduate studies in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. During my time at UCLA, I was a Minority Fellow in the American Sociological Association. This fellowship was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and became my first introduction to health research.  I received my Ph.D. in 2009 and then started a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Health & Society Scholars at the University of Pennsylvania, a population health program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  During my time in the RWJF Health & Society Scholars, I was also affiliated with the Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC) and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, both of which are housed at the University of Pennsylvania.  In the fall of 2011, I became an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto.  In 2016, I became a Bissell-Heyd Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs.  I am also a Senior Fellow in Yale University's Urban Ethnography Project.