Gabriella Alvarez (she, her, hers)

Research Specialist

Gabriella serves as the primary point person within the institute for all data collection, cleaning, organizing, and analysis. She provides analysis on both qualitative and quantitative data across an array of projects related to community-engaged scholarship. She also serves as co-author alongside faculty by displaying and interpreting large scale data for community-facing research reports. Beyond this, Gabriella supports community-facing trainings related to data and research skills for community-based organizations in the region.

Gabriella has co-authored the paper Building an Inclusive Economy in the Monterey Bay Region: A Progress Report alongside Chris Benner. She has also been co-developing a series on inclusive economics known as “Solidarity Economics and..” on topics such as housing, public health, and childcare.

Gabriella has co-authored the paper Building an Inclusive Economy in the Monterey Bay Region: A Progress Report alongside Chris Benner. She has also been co-developing a series on inclusive economics known as “Solidarity Economics and..” on topics such as housing, public health, and childcare.

Gabriella is a mixed methods researcher with a passion for data centered social justice. Prior to entering the research realm, she became interested in public health through grassroots work on harm reduction and opioid overdose prevention in San Luis Obispo, CA. She went on to receive her MPH in Population and Family Health from Columbia University and worked with the Columbia School of Nursing on quality of life improvement studies for people living with HIV/AIDS. As her love for working with marginalized and underserved populations grew, she sought a career which emphasized community engaged research. In 2022, Gabriella followed her research interests to the Institute for Social Transformation and has been working on projects related to inclusive economic development in the Monterey Bay region since then.

Contact info: galvar18@ucsc.edu