Yesnely  Flores

Yesnely Flores is a doctoral student at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. She transitioned from the master's program in Rollin’s BSHES department to her current doctoral student position. During her master's degree, she focused on equity and diversity, serving in leadership positions in organizations such as RSGA and BSHES’ DEI committee. She was one of the founders of La Alianza Latinx, an organization committed to strengthening and building the Latinx community at Rollins. She was awarded the Outstanding Latinx Graduate Student and Eugene J. Gangarosa awards, speaking to her commitment to equity.

Prior to attending graduate school, Flores was a high school educator and taught primarily Latinx youth. Flores' occupational, academic, and personal upbringing influenced her passion to shed light on the intersections of immigration policy and intergenerational trauma among Latinx youth in the Southeast. Flores' work explores this intersection by utilizing community-based and mixed-methods approaches. She was awarded the Outstanding Student Paper Award for her work titled "Amplified Social Isolation from COVID-19 policies amongst Undocumented Latinx Families". She plans to expand on previous research by incorporating racial capitalism theory to inform policy-making decisions. Flores is an educator at heart and aspires to be a profesora with the hope and intent of mentoring Latinx students.