Meet the MACONDO Research Team

Gabi Celia Ortiz, MSW, MA.Ed (Purepecha) is a PhD Candidate at the Boston College School of Social Work and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar. Advised by Dr. Maria Fernanda Piñeros-Leaño, Gabi’s interdisciplinary mixed methods research centers on the health and wellness of Trans Latine, Indigenous, and Black women, focusing on organizational and social psychology within work settings. She collaborates with faculty at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, including Dr. Ashley Lacombe-Duncan, Dr. Kristi Gamarel, and Dr. Sari Reisner, who focus on understanding and mitigating health inequities for trans populations.

Gabi holds an MSW from Boston College School of Social Work, an MA in Higher Education and Organizational Change from UCLA, and dual BA degrees in Political Science and International Development Studies, also from UCLA. 

Megan M’lisa Taylor is a second-year doctoral student in Boston College’s Social Work PhD program, as well as a mother, wife, and sister. Prior to entering her doctoral program, she gained experience working and volunteering with refugee-serving nonprofit organizations in the United States and Canada. Megan’s research focuses on both domestic and international issues relevant to migration. She is passionate about applying global wisdom to the challenges that refugees and migrants face, enhancing refugees’ decision-making power, and reforming multilevel policies and practices to improve the mental health, wellbeing, and life satisfaction of refugees and migrants.

Erika is a first-year PhD student in Social Work at Boston College. She was born and raised in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico, and lived in Tijuana, a city on the northern border with the United States, for nine years before coming to BC. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa and a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies with a focus on Borders and Migration from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana. Additionally, she has certifications in Public Health, brief therapy, cognitive-behavioral intervention, suicidology, and Ignatian pedagogy. She worked as an academic at Universidad Iberoamericana Tijuana for eight years, there she led the Academic Health Department and founded the Border Human Interaction Laboratory, a space for training in research and action on border and migration phenomena. Her previous experience includes leading three public health research projects with vulnerable populations on the Mexico-US border, serving as Principal Investigator for two of them. Her research topics have focused on public health, mental health, migrant families, gender violence, emotions and return migration, xenophobia towards migrants, and education and socialization of migrant children. During her PhD, she plans to analyze the mental health of migrant families displaced by violence, mediated by cultural elements, throughout their migration journey and upon arrival. In her free time, she enjoys outdoor walks and hikes, spending time with her family, and creating educational content for dissemination via video and podcast.

Beatriz Costas-Rodriguez is a third-year doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology at Albizu

University in San Juan. She began her academic journey at Boston College, where she majored

in psychology with a focus on Latinx studies, graduating in 2022. Her graduate studies are driven

by a commitment to understanding mental health issues in Latinx migrants, women's health, and

the mental health implications of migration.

Her research primarily examines the effects of migration and its related trauma on Latinx

immigrants in the U.S. and Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. Additionally, she has contributed

to studies on maternal mental health, exploring diagnoses like postpartum depression and

identifying protective factors that support mental well-being in women.

 Diana is from Chicago, IL. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, obtaining a B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Diana is interested in a broad range of topics in Molecular Biology. Specifically, she hopes to get involved in infectious diseases research and/or cancer research. Diana is also interested in mental health research as it relates to communities of color. In her spare time, she enjoys taking walks and playing fetch with her puppy. Earlier in the year, Diana also started to embroider.

Dr. Nancy Jacquelyn Pérez-Flores is from Chicago, IL. She earned her Bachelor of Social Work in 2018 and her Master of Social Work in 2019 from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign School of Social Work. In 2024, she completed her PhD in Social Work at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. During her doctoral training, Dr. Pérez-Flores completed a three-year National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) T32 Predoctoral Fellowship in mental health services research at the Center for Mental Health Services Research. She was also awarded the NIMH Mental Health Research Dissertation Grant to Enhance Workforce Diversity to support her dissertation project. Currently, Dr. Pérez-Flores is a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute T32 Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Her research focuses on understanding and addressing behavioral health disparities among minoritized racial/ethnic populations, particularly within the Latinx population. She is especially interested in adapting and designing digital tools to create culturally and linguistically tailored, evidence-based interventions that improve access to behavioral health services. Dr. Pérez-Flores enjoys cooking, reading poetry, and spending quality time with her family and friends.