Meet the Fellows!

Conner is a rising junior in Timothy Dwight College majoring in History. Continuing his work as political chair of Yale’s Chinese American Students Association, Conner will be interning at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office in the Vulnerable Victims Unit (VVU), a division recently formed to address hate crimes and cases of assault or financial abuse against elders. Through direct victim engagement, assisting prosecutors and paralegals, community partnerships, etc., Conner hopes to work specifically with the large Asian elder population in San Francisco and the VVU team to help victims understand their rights, access the office and their services, and more. In his free time, Conner enjoys cooking, traveling, music concerts, and trying new restaurants!

Michael is a recent graduate from Alameda, California. He majored in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and Political Science with an Advanced Language Certificate in Chinese. Michael is interested in immigration policy reform and local efforts to support migrant communities. This summer, Michael will be working as a Legal Intern at the Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Law Unit in New York City. During his time at Yale, Michael was a First-Year Counselor for Branford College, a Peer Liaison for the Asian American Cultural Center, and a member of Dwight Hall’s Student Executive Committee.

Pia is from Atmore, Alabama, and recently graduated with majors in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health. During this past year, she has been concurrently pursuing a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) in Social and Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in U.S. Health Justice at the Yale School of Public Health and will complete her MPH in Spring 2024. She is pursuing a career in the public health field to work towards healthcare equity and improving healthcare access in marginalized communities, especially BIPOC, immigrants, and the elderly.

This summer, she will gain experience doing this work through Korean Community Services (KCS) as an Immigrant Community Health Clinic Specialist in Anaheim, CA. KCS’s mission is to provide client-centered, culturally inclusive, expert care to directly improve the well-being of underserved communities and individuals through healthcare, social services, and community programs. As a public health intern, she will assist the Executive Director and Administration team with projects related to the provision of safety healthcare for immigrants and other underserved patient populations.

Zenaida Aguirre (she/her), is a rising senior in Branford College studying Ethnicity, Race and Migration with a concentration in Immigration Studies. She is a first-generation student from Los Angeles, where her Mexican family resides. Zenaida has used her studies to advocate for immigrant communities across the US including in New Haven where she volunteers with Havenly, a cafe managed by immigrant and refugee women. On-campus she is involved with ¡Oye! Spoken Word, the Poorvu Center and the Latin dance team Sabrosura. She looks forward to using the legal field to support immigrants everywhere.

This summer, Zenaida will be working with La Raza Centro Legal, a community center that provides free legal service to Latine and low-income immigrant communities in San Francisco. As an intern, she is responsible for supporting immigration attorneys file and complete immigration applications such as DACA renewals and naturalization. She will also work with the Immigration Department during community immigration clinics and outreach events.

Laura is a rising senior at Yale majoring in history with a focus on the history of carceral systems and postconflict memory and reconciliation. She was born in Toledo, Ohio but has lived primarily in upstate New York. While at Yale, she has spent a considerable amount time at Dwight Hall, working on projects ranging from a literary magazine which supports the creative work of unhoused people to helping justice-impacted people apply for absolute pardons. She is interested in challenging traditional conceptions of punishment and justice, and in leveraging knowledge of the law to support people affected by violence, poverty, and displacement. Laura is particularly interested in supporting women impacted by domestic and sexual violence who are so often unsupported and disregarded by law enforcement. With the support of YANA and Dwight Hall, Laura will be working this summer at the D.C. Federal Public Defender, where she will help build defenses for low-income clients facing federal charges in D.C.

Patrick is a rising junior History major in Silliman College from Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Patrick is interested in dismantling the carceral state and creating systems of governance that are truly democratic. This summer, Patrick will be working as an Investigative Intern at the Travis County Public Defender’s Office in Austin, Texas. On campus, Patrick helps run the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Clinic, and has been an Urban Fellow at DataHaven.

Theo is a rising junior in Branford College majoring in political science with an interdisciplinary concentration in urbanism. His academic interests include housing policy, land use law, and public infrastructure, and he is passionate about exploring ways to promote social justice and environmental sustainability within these areas. This summer, Theo is a YANA-Dwight Hall Summer Fellow at the New York City Housing Authority where he is assisting the Compliance Department in its efforts to address physical quality and environmental health concerns in New York’s public housing. Theo has also worked with New Haven City Plan through the Dwight Hall Urban Fellows Program and looks forward to returning as an Urban Fellow in the fall. In his free time, Theo enjoys playing trombone in the Yale Concert Band, cooking, and spending time outdoors with his friends.

Hi! My name is Charlie Tran and I’m a rising senior in Pierson College from Honolulu, Hawai’i. I’m majoring in the History of Science and Medicine (HSHM), in the Global Health Scholars program, and a 5-year BA/MPH candidate in Social & Behavioral Sciences. After I complete the MPH, I hope to work for a year or two before applying to medical school. I’m passionate about health equity and social justice and believe that the two go hand-in-hand. Through my academics and career, I aim to make quality and effective healthcare accessible for all, but especially marginalized, peoples. Outside of my career interests, I enjoy trying new restaurants around New Haven and making various caffeinated drinks at home.

Project Description: This summer, I’m working with Fair Haven Community Health Care as an intern with the Care Coordination team. Care coordination includes a variety of support services to bridge any gaps between social and medical needs of patients. One of my projects includes piloting social determinants of health screenings in clinic waiting rooms to streamline appointments and identify opportunities to connect patients with other community resources. Another project includes implementing and evaluating the efficacy of preemptive care coordination efforts to reduce disease burden and related costs of emergency medical needs. Over the course of the summer, I aim to learn more about how community clinics operate to ensure high-quality service while balancing expenses and logistics to continue offering services.

As a premedical student and first-generation immigrant, Grace majored in Global Affairs to explore the intersection of global health with policy and international relations. To understand social determinants of health and policies that reinforce health disparities, she saw a need to combine biological and social sciences in her academic studies before becoming a physician. Through coursework in science, statistics, writing and policy, Grace developed skills to contribute to clinical research, volunteer as an EMT and at the HAVEN free clinic for immigrant and uninsured patients, as well as conduct global health fieldwork. Grace’s major at Yale has fueled her goal to serve patients, especially in immigrant and marginalized communities, and advocate evidence-based policies for health equity.

Grace aspires to become an emergency medicine physician and care for all patients who come to the hospital. In addition to clinical practice, she aims to advocate fiercely for preventive primary care and work to reform the health system so that all patients can get the care they need when they need it, rather than end up in the ER for lack of insurance or immigration status. In the long-term, Grace plans to stay engaged in research and evidence generation, while collaborating with government, policy organizations, and international NGOs. More immediately, Grace will spend the next two years conducting independent public health research in China on a Fulbright scholarship, and pursuing a Master’s in global health governance at the Graduate Institute Geneva before attending medical school to begin her clinical training.

Fellowship Project

Grace will be working with GetUsPPE, a volunteer coalition founded by ER physicians to address the COVID-19 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) shortage crisis, as their Blog lead on the Marketing/Communications team. As the organization has quickly grown to become the largest national database of need for PPE, Grace will work with the founding physicians and project teams to launch a new blog, with main goals of increasing GetUsPPE visibility, establishing thought leadership, and mobilizing the public for government advocacy.

This physician-led grassroots coalition has built the most comprehensive public national database for need identification and relief distribution. As of April 16, nearly 7,500 requests have come in from hospitals, nursing facilities and home health aid all over the country.  A majority of institutions, especially in hard-hit states, reported that most of their PPE would run out within the next week or two. By robustly assessing national demand, GetUsPPE.org can develop internal and partnered solutions to equitably match and deliver donated supply. As of April 13, around 150,000 pieces of PPE have been delivered to healthcare personnel in California, 130,000 pieces in Michigan, and 45,000 in Baltimore.  The organization is now continuing outreach to health workers in underrepresented/marginalized communities, building the solution with transferability to local or state government in mind, and working to resolve the PPE shortage as quickly as possible.

Grace is excited about working with GetUsPPE because it is an urgent, united effort, a targeted, data-driven solution, and an advocacy leader. She feels her small contribution of a blog will aim to amplify medical workers’ voices and push for government action, while expanding reach in communities that face disproportionate shortages. Her objectives for the blog are increasing GetUsPPE visibility, strengthening credibility and thought leadership, and mobilizing advocacy. 

With a focus in Afro-Asian aesthetics and intimacies in contemporary literature, Minh is grounded in a politics of relationality and solidarity. He firmly believes that the humanities—in particular the disciplinary schools of critical ethnic studies, gender studies, and ethnic literatures—serves as a critical space of intervention that illuminates the numerous ways people are (dis)connected. Understanding these gaps and overlaps between people of color, gender minorities, immigrants and refugees, incarcerated populations, and other marginalized communities allows us to imagine possibilities of coalition and collectivity. Majoring in English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies has given Minh the practical and theoretical tools to conduct a relational politics within his scholarship, community organizing, and everyday life.

Next year, Minh will be continuing at Yale through its Ph.D. program in American Studies. His goal is to build a methodological repertoire in critical ethnic studies and the public humanities, then serve as a Teaching Fellow for both Yale students at the College and the Yale Prison Education Initiative. Afterwards, he plans to complete his dissertation on Afro-Asian intimacies and literatures. 

Fellowship Project

Minh plans to continue his work (remotely) as a Fellow for the Yale Prison Education Initiative (YPEI) through a series of projects geared towards student involvement and program development. In particular, he hopes to pursue two main projects in furthering the incarcerated students’ continued scholarly engagement: (1) co-designing a creative writing workshop and (2) developing and augmenting the students’ recently cancelled Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and Migration (ER&M) seminar. With these two projects, Minh is concerned with both the present and future—allowing students to continue their current scholarship, which was formally suspended due to COVID-19, while setting up the institutional scaffolding for them to finish their coursework once in-person visitation is permitted.

As a Fellow for YPEI this summer, Minh seeks to establish himself as a constant and reliable point of contact for the students through a robust series of remote programming. In this position, he will be responding to the students’ direct needs which they have voiced—i.e., continuing their academic programming through a snail mail-structured creative writing workshop and planning for future coursework and academic opportunities.

Through letter-writing with the YPEI students, Minh will be focused on two simultaneous projects: (1) the creative writing workshop and (2) future academic coursework and opportunities. The Creative Writing Workshop will involve a condensed course packet, created by a guest lecturer or artist, to send the students as a mini-lesson on any genre within creative writing. The program will also entail workshopping with rounds of edits, feedback, as well as comments, which the students can then implement and send back. Ultimately YPEI hopes to publish the students’ creative writings, either independently through a chapbook or through The Yale Literary Magazine. 

Minh will also be heavily emphasizing the development of the suspended ER&M class. He plans to extend the curriculum so that the YPEI students can experience a full semester’s range of ER&M once classes resume. Furthermore, Minh hopes to make ER&M a repeating feature of the students’ curriculum, necessitating the recruitment of professors from the humanities and social sciences departments to teach for future years.

Related to ER&M, Minh will also be working with current Yale faculty to conduct final coursework for the YPEI students related to COVID-19. As a summer project, the students will be developing a curriculum project or a final essay related to ER&M in order to “make a work that they want to see in the world, which they think the world needs to have.” Lastly, Minh plans to devise a master spreadsheet of conference, workshop, roundtable, and publication opportunities for the students to present and publish their work beyond the YPEI classroom with the goal of having their work placed in the larger academic community.

Combatting the deportation of asylum-seekers and immigrants in her hometown of Utica and the broader central New York region, an area where there are only a handful immigration attorneys within several hours’ drive. Trinh will be working closely with immigration advocacy groups in her community, particularly the Mohawk Valley Latino Association, to build a network of allies prepared to fight to keep families together and safe from deportation.

This summer, Trinh will be helping individuals and families to navigate immigration processes; organizing a rapid-response refugee and immigrant defense network; creating and distributing multilingual know-your-rights educational materials; and organizing local congregations to create sanctuary spaces. Trinh’s work will take her across the state to urban cities as well as the rural farms of New York dairy country.

Trinh’s summer fellowship continues the grassroots community organizing and advocacy that she started at the age of 13, when she planned her first protest against public education cuts. In high school, Trinh organized an educational justice movement in Upstate New York that focused on improving the quality of public education particularly for immigrant and refugee students. During high school she was appointed to the board of the Central New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the youngest person to hold such an honor.

In New Haven, Trinh maintained her commitment to refugee and immigrant rights. She tutored refugee and immigrant students with New Haven Reads and with Students of Salaam. Through the Schell Center at Yale Law School, she helped create and teach a human rights workshop for students at Wilbur Cross High School. She has also been involved with the Yale Refugee Project and served as an Urban Fellow at Dwight Hall with the Immigrant Bail Fund, researching ICE enforcement patterns, aggregating a pro se defense curriculum for asylum-seekers, and helping to bond immigrants out of pretrial detention. During her summers at Yale, she has interned at Alliance for Quality Education, the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, and the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

Trinh seeks to obtain a JD and PhD to continue advocating for better immigration law and policy, with the hope that one day she will be able to assist her community in central New York. In September, she will be moving to Cambodia to do transnational political advocacy with Southeast Asian refugees who have been deported in efforts to reunite them with their families.

Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, Federal Coordination and Compliance Section, which works to ensure that courts, correctional facilities, and law enforcement are adequately meeting the needs of non-English speakers, Washington, DC.

Hailing from the Idaho panhandle, Luisa is one of only 8% of the Yale undergraduate body from rural regions, which are often entrenched in poverty and lack many resources for upward mobility. Luisa has been working with New Haven Legal Assistance (NHLAA) since the fall of 2017, an experience that has since defined her life’s path. Working closely with undocumented woman victims of severe domestic violence, Luisa developed close relationships that enabled her to better detail the kinds of experiences of stalking, abuse, and assault her clients experience. Luisa has been a primary advocate in over 15 cases involving survivors of crimes such as human trafficking, childhood neglect, state torture, sexual abuse, gang violence, and kidnapping.

While working on these cases, Luisa identified several systemic challenges that impeded survivors from accessing the help they needed and took steps to improve them:  (1) The insurmountable barriers that non-English speakers face in the justice system, from their initial interactions with law enforcement to the inability to locate, or understand availability of, mental health care and other resources, the providers of which are unable to accommodate non-English speakers. Luisa drafted a bill that addresses weaknesses in law enforcement language access policies that she and her supervisor are intending to submit to the Connecticut General Assembly. She also founded the Yale Interpretation Network (YIN), an organization that provides pro-bono language services to local nonprofits with the goal of increasing the accessibility of resources to the immigrant community.  (2) The challenge for survivors who are often isolated from community resources that could ameliorate their circumstances, primarily due to a lack of easily-accessible information about available social and other services. Luisa thus created the Resource Access Mapping Project (RAMP), a free digital platform that connects service providers and marginalized populations to community resources. The app maps services like legal aid, English classes, and food pantries and provides information such as location and eligibility. As Director, she has grown RAMP into a 40-person community based organization (CBO) comprising students, faculty, and community members.

Luisa plans to pursue a career in public service, specifically related to family health and immigrant rights. She intends to pursue a joint JD/MSW as a means to combine the skills and empowerment she will gain from knowledge about the law with skills in community organizing and clinical services.