Our Team
Steering committee steered by Germán Chiriboga, Chair, and Adán Colón-Carmona, Co-chair.
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Germán Chiriboga
Germán Chiriboga holds a Master’s in Public Health from UMass School of Public Health. Currently, he is a Program Director at the Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at UMass Chan Medical School where he directs the Science Participation Resource Center, which is dedicated to increasing diversity in health research as a matter of social justice. Additionally, he is an adjunct faculty member at Clark University’s International Development, Community and Environment Department where he teaches graduate courses around health equity and the social determinants of health and their impact on health policy and research. For the past 10 years, he has worked in the design and implementation of narrative-based/storytelling Public Health research and intervention projects nationally and internationally. Germán actively collaborates with the City of Worcester as a member of several taskforces around health equity. His personal research interests evolve around novel pathways to increasing the understanding of health perspectives among underrepresented groups, especially Latino/a/e communities.
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Adán Colón-Carmona
Adán Colón-Carmona is Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston where he is a plant cell and developmental biologist studying growth control in response to internal and external environmental cues. Dr. Colón-Carmona leads university initiatives that include research education activities geared towards diverse student populations; focus on cancer and cancer disparities research, outreach and training; and address diversity, equity and inclusion within faculty ranks. Having mentored 100s of highly diverse undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs in his laboratory, Dr. Colón-Carmona is dedicated to social change in higher education as a vehicle to improving peoples’ lives.
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Mary Jo Marion
Mary Jo Marion is a public policy professional with expertise in workforce development, health, and urban education policy. She is Associate Vice President of Urban Affairs and Latino Education Institute at Worcester State University. Marion has been quoted in The New York Times and Boston Globe.
Recent Publication: Thomas E. Conroy, Ph.D. Mary Jo Marion Timothy E. Murphy, Ph.D Elizabeth Setren “In Search of Opportunity: Latino Men’s Paths to Post-Secondary Education in Urban Massachusetts” (2016) Boston Foundation Publication
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Fabian Torres-Ardila
Dr. Torres-Ardila holds a PhD in Mathematics from Boston University. He has experience designing teacher preparation curriculum to increase Mathematics teachers’ support to English Language Learners within the Mathematics classroom. Currently, he is the associate director of the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development & Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. As associate Director, he draws on the strength and resources of the University of Massachusetts Boston to support the development of research focused on the Latino community across the state. At the institute, Dr. Torres-Ardila conducts research that examines the current issues facing our communities, such as Latino participation in the STEM pipeline and socio-linguistic factors in K-12 education. As part of the institute’s team, Dr. Torres-Ardila diligently works to ensure that the institute supports the development of Latino community leadership through partnerships with local groups.
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Clarissa Carvalho
Clarissa Carvalho is a Brazilian Anthropology/Sociology/Urban Studies professor currently living in Massachusetts. Over her career in Brazil, she has researched social movements and internet activism for women’s reproductive and sexual rights and the anthropology of birth and its interfaces with gender and feminist theories. While in the USA, Dr. Carvalho has been engaged in immigrant issues, specifically Latinx, having created and coordinated an ESL and Educational Advocacy program for Worcester Public School parents and caregivers. She is also involved in research regarding reproductive justice issues and Brazilian immigrants’ mental health.
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Lorna Rivera
Dr. Lorna Rivera is Director of the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development & Public Policy, and Associate Professor in the Leadership in Education Department at UMass-Boston. Rivera has a Ph.D. in Sociology, and her research focuses on women’s literacy programs, social welfare reform, gender/racial/ethnic-based health disparities, and the education of Latinx students. Currently, Rivera is a Principal Evaluator on the "Advancing Health Literacy to Enhance Equitable Community Responses to COVID-19" project with the Boston Public Health Commission. She is a Co-PI on the study, "Community-driven environmental health assessment in Vieques, Puerto Rico”. Rivera oversees the Talented & Gifted (TAG) and Proyecto Alerta bilingual summer learning academies for Boston Public Schools students. Rivera serves on the Board of Directors for the Hyde Square Task Force, the Center to Support Immigrant Organizing, and the Executive Board of Directors for the Inter-University Programs on Latino Research in the US. She formerly served on the city of Boston’s COVID Health Inequities Taskforce and contributed to the city's Health Equity Now Plan (2021).
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Carlos Eduardo Siqueira
Dr. Carlos Eduardo Siqueira is an Emeritus Professor at the School for the Environment at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He serves as the Coordinator of the Transnational Brazilian Project at the Mauricio Gastón Institute of Latino Community Development and Public Policy. Over his career he has researched Brazilian immigrant health, health care policy, and health and safety inequities at work. He has also conducted research and outreach activities in partnership with several Brazilian immigrant organizations in Massachusetts.
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Rodolfo R. Vega
Rodolfo R. Vega has extensive experience in program evaluation and providing capacity-building services to communities of color across the nation in the areas of behavioral health, substance abuse, HIV, problem gambling, diabetes, and obesity. Rodolfo has helped health departments and community-based organizations translate research into practice and provided technical assistance in service integration strategies, program implementation, and developing evaluation designs. At JSI, Rodolfo has served as evaluator on dozens of programs. He served as President of the Lynn Community Health Center Board of Directors between 2017 and 2022. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin’s doctoral program in community psychology, and the National Institute of Drug Abuse Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Miami School of Medicine.
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Dr. Sarimer Sánchez
Dr. Sarimer Sánchez serves as the Medical Director of the Infectious Diseases Bureau at the Boston Public Health Commission. She is also a clinician at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Sexual Health Clinic. She received her medical degree from the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine in 2015 and completed an Internal Medicine residency at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. Dr. Sánchez completed a subspecialty fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2020 and the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Minority Health Policy with an MPH degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2021. Her areas of interest include advancing multilingual health literacy and equitable delivery of communicable disease prevention and treatment services, including immunizations, to immigrant communities.
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Krystal Garcia
Krystal G. Garcia serves as the Director of Policy for the Boston Public Health Commission. Ms. Garcia is extremely passionate about advancing equity-centered policies, community-engaged research, healthcare, and social services quality improvement, and elevating the well-being of those who have disproportionately disparate health outcomes. Prior to her tenure working for the City of Boston, Krystal was a health services consultant at John Snow, Inc. (JSI), where she led projects aimed at mitigating the risks and harms of problem gambling, substance use disorders, and infectious and chronic diseases. Ms. Garcia also brings rich experiences as a health services researcher and social services provider to community members throughout Boston. She is a graduate of the master’s program in health policy and management at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina.
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Karla Corres Luna
Ms. Corres Luna is a doctoral student at UMass – Boston under the Organizations and Social Change program. She is working under the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development & Public Policy as a research assistant and is the Latinx Knowledge Hub outreach coordinator. Prior to moving to Massachusetts, Ms. Corres Luna worked in central California doing work around community organizing, public policy and affordable housing. Her research interests are social enterprise organizations and community ownership.