"As a lifelong Chicagoan and child advocate, I have devoted my career to child betterment in hopes of improving quality of life for children within the Chicagoland area. I have worked in research for the last nine years and am currently a part-time research assistant for the PROTECT project. I also work on a federal grant project for Chicago Public Schools developing community-based education plans. I started research by working on two different projects, one examining the longitudinal impact of Head Start Programs and the other examining an after-school mentorship program for at-risk students. From here, I have worked on projects involving smoking cessation in adolescent girls, video game intervention classroom methods for children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and as an enumerator for the 2020 U.S. decennial census. My interest in pediatric oral health began in 2018 while working on the Coordinated Oral Health Promotion Project investigating community health workers’ influence on improving oral health outcomes in young children and continues today. In my free time, I enjoy the outdoors, live music, museums, rigorous exercise, video gaming and drawing."