Born and raised in Hawthorne, California, Dr. Bernardette Pinetta (she/her) is the daughter of Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants. Growing up in Los Angeles, she witnessed how inequitable our educational system is towards communities of color and the need for culturally relevant and social justice-oriented education. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she weaves together theories from education, psychology, and political science to contextualize how youth of color develop their ethnic-racial identity and how such views serve as key mechanisms for their orientation toward social justice. As a community-engaged scholar, she partners with schools, organizations, and young people to cultivate learning environments that are both culturally affirming and consciousness-raising.

Outside of academia, Dr. Pinetta loves hikes, reading YA novels, gardening, and her fur babies.

Iris Lazo-Cruz (she/her) is a senior Psychology major at the University of the District of Columbia. Her research interests include ethnic-racial socialization, identity development, critical consciousness, and the well-being of Black and Brown families. She is particularly passionate about examining how systems like schools, families, and communities can either support or hinder youth development, resource access, and racial equity.

Through the UC-HBCU Pathways to Psychological Sciences Program, Iris worked with Dr. Pinetta at UC Riverside during the Summer of 2025 to examine how family and school messages about race influence youth political action. Her experience deepened her commitment to community-based research, racial equity, and systems-level change.

Iris is a first-generation Salvadoran American from Washington, D.C. In her free time, she enjoys reading, taking lots and lots of pictures, and spending time with her dogs, Solita and Gigi.

Esmeralda (she/her) is a 2nd-generation Mexican American Latina raised in the Inland Empire. Informed by her lived experiences, her research interests explore the racialization process as it intersects with language. Her work investigates the experiences of AP/Honors Spanish bilingual Latine students through a raciolinguistic framework, placing the role of race and language ideologies at the forefront to describe how students develop and interpret their social worlds. She explores the confined educational pathways that are ascribed to multilingual Latine students, where they are often expected to navigate binding and contradictory perceptions imposed on racialized multilingual students. She is passionate about working towards dismantling educational inequities for multilingual Latine students.

Outside of academia, Esme enjoys coffee shops, pottery classes, K-dramas, and workout classes (yoga/cycling/pilates).