Vanessa is a Research Analyst II and contributes her qualitative skills and background to work on teacher evaluation and improvement. Before coming to the UChicago Consortium, Vanessa had a range of experiences teaching sociology and conducting qualitative research on various topics such as youth development programs and racial microaggressions. She has also published her work on issues of culture and bias in youth programs and immigrant Latinx parent’s perspectives on cultural socialization. She has presented her work in different academic conferences and youth organization presentations. She is deeply interested in how our systems and institutions have constructed racial-cultural inequities and how these systems and institutions continue to reproduce, perpetuate, and sustain this inequity. She is interested in how historically marginalized communities and people resist, heal, and thrive in the U.S. and all over the world. She is Purépecha, which is one of the many indigenous groups in Mexico, and she uses her culture and family as a source of inspiration.
