Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are the core values I always have. Having grown up as a queer woman in a lower-income family in Cambodia, I understood firsthand the experience of being underprivileged, underrepresented, and discriminated against. It is only with the strong support from family, friends, and educators that I am here today, making significant progress in my education. I am now someone who is relatively less underprivileged, underrepresented, and discriminated against compared to many of my peers back home. I have a strong commitment and mission in my work as a person, researcher, and teacher to provide others with similar backgrounds with the same acknowledgment and support.
My research reflects on these values. My primary focus was on low-income or resource-constrained families. I pay particular attention to understanding these families’ relationships, concerns, dynamics in economic decision-making processes, and interactions with social support programs. My work related to family caregiving and social programs employed an interdisciplinary lens that combines economics, sociology, demography, and developmental psychology to broadly focus on how such programs affect families’ human capital development, well-being, and economic situations. The goal is to raise awareness of their day-to-day struggles and produce scientific findings that would advocate and aid in the creation, modification, and adoption of more accessible and equitable social policies for socioeconomically disadvantaged families. I believe that the inclusion of voiced concerns from diverse underserved families is crucial in social policies to ensure that such policies can work to reduce economic inequality, improve well-being, and promote economic security for families.
As a graduate student, I often participated in seminars and workshops that included research with new insights on DEI topics or works that provide new resolutions to improve DEI in communities. I engaged in conversations discussing DEI issues around campus. When there were incidents of Asian hate fueled by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I became a part of the School of Human Ecology’s Graduate Student Organization’s (SoHE-GSO) anti-racist committee to provide insights on the issue as a representative of the Asian community.
As a member of the SoHE-GSO, I have consistently advocated for more transparency and equitable opportunities for fellow graduate students. I have initiated and participated in efforts to bring about more tangible, intangible, and sustainable resources for all graduate students. During meetings with the school representatives, I often took on responsibilities to be vulnerable and discussed concerns and struggles as a representative of first-generation international students.