About Us

Stephanie Torres

​Stephanie Torres, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and a psychologist. Her program of research focuses on the experiences, ecological risk, and resilience factors among low-income, Latinx communities, particularly Latinx families impacted by immigration-related stress. She hopes to create school-based and community-based programs that promote well-being and mental health.

She is the principal investigator for FIESTA, an intervention created with the Resurrection Project (TRP). Her clinical work has focused on addressing trauma exposure and she specializes in serving bilingual, Spanish-speaking families.

She is the daughter of Mexican parents and proud to be Latina. She loves to travel to new places and loves cats.

Andrea Donis

Andrea is currently a fifth-year doctoral student in the clinical psychology program at Loyola University Chicago. Broadly, she is interested in studying trauma exposure among Latine, immigrant, and asylum-seeking/refugee youth. She is interested in understanding the effects of trauma exposure among these populations and better ways to assess complex histories of trauma experienced by these youth.

Through this insight, she is interested in developing, assessing, and disseminating accessible interventions that meet the unique needs of these populations, with the ultimate goal of promoting and supporting their resilience and well-being.

She is particularly interested in unaccompanied immigrant minors from Central America and hopes to extend her research to policy-driven work.

Gustavo "Tavi" García

Gustavo Garcia (they/él) is a PhD student in Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Before returning to school, they spent nine years as a bilingual elementary school teacher in Connecticut, where they worked to make sure students felt proud of their languages, cultures, and identities.

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Gustavo focuses on making programs better for the people and communities they serve. They are especially interested in making sure people's voices are heard, their knowledge is valued, and they have a say in decisions that affect their lives. They also study how programs can continue helping communities long after they begin. Through their work with the FLOR Lab, Gustavo helps develop and study programs that support the health and well-being of Latino families. 

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Outside of school, Gustavo loves cats, dancing, and reading. They enjoy traveling, exploring new places, and learning from the people they meet along the way.

Arely Meza

Arely is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois Chicago, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. Her research interests include mental health disparities and understanding how social, environmental, and cultural factors influence the development and prevention of psychiatric disorders, particularly anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

Arely hopes to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology and become a clinical psychologist, with the goal of working with underserved communities to address mental health disparities and improve access to culturally responsive care.

She is a Chicago native and the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants, and her experiences growing up on the Far Southeast Side have shaped her interest in mental health equity.

In her free time, Arely enjoys reading and drinking matcha.

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Stephanie Ramos

Stephanie Ramos (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in the Community and Applied Developmental Program in the Department of Psychology at UIC. She started her research journey by participating in The Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) during undergrad where she focused on ethnic identity formation in Latine young adults. Through SROP she won the SROP Fellowship where she began her graduate training in 2022. Her current research interest is understanding and advocating for Latine students in higher education specially those who begin their journeys in two-year colleges.

She plans to continue working with the Latine young adult community to close the higher education gap by advocating for and implementing new policies.

During her free time, she likes to cycle, run, and quality time with her two cats. 

Emilia Roman

Emilia Roman is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Educational Psychology program and a master's student in the Youth Development at UIC. She has previously conducted research on music integration into virtual classrooms, sleep disparities among sexual minorities, and understanding the cultural capital of Latine community health workers.

Emilia hopes to continue working with the Latinx community to further explore the role of families in youth’s educational decisions, diversifying music education, and how familial pressures and expectations impact Latinx youth.

She is a proud Latina of parents from Guerrero and Jalisco, Mexico. Emilia enjoys walking her beagle (Milo), watching horror movies, and doing puzzles.

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Daniela Vazquez Zamudio

Daniela Vazquez Zamudio is an Undergraduate student at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is studying Criminology, Law, and Justice and Political Science.

Currently her research interest is how immigration policies can impact the mental health of Latine young adults in the Chicagoland area. Latine mental health is important to focus on within all age groups due to it being considered “taboo” in many parts of the Latine community.

Bringing awareness to a “taboo” topic in the Latine community brings progress to not only the outside community resources but also to realize what changes need to be made to support families who could be experiencing effects from the current harshness around immigration.