Zayda Sorrell Medina | Researcher
Zayda Sorrell Medina is national award winning youth educator, advocate, and community organizer. Her background is in advocacy, community organizing, youth mentoring and program development. For five years Zayda was a Program Manager at the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh where she developed a multi-year youth mentoring program for students in Pittsburgh Public Schools to foster a culture of academic achievement. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California Irvine. Her research centers on topics related to the societal impact of the third sector organizations, immigrant regularization, nonprofit and government relations, equity and inclusion outcomes of marginalized groups. Zayda has a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts from the University of Missouri and Master’s in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh.
Jasmine Adams | Special Projects Assistant
Jasmine Adams is a third-year at UC Irvine, majoring in English and African-American Studies, with a minor in Latin. In her current undergraduate years, she won the Writing Center’s Black Lives Matter writing contest in 2017, participated in the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program during the 2017 summer, presented in the Undergraduate Culture and Theory Conference this past Spring Quarter, received the Cultural Leadership Award, and has been on the Dean’s Honor list several quarters. Currently, she serves as one of the Co-chairs for Black Student Union, the Vice President for Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., and is the Co-chair for iRise, an outreach program for admitted first-year and transfer minority students. In November 2017 Jasmine was appointed the Special Projects Assistant for The Africana Institute for Creativity, Recognition and Elevation.