My unique contribution to making mental health more affordable and accessible is to increase the integration of mental health services into the health care system and elevate them as a prevention resource. My professional experience has primarily focused on prevention, including in the mental health space. As a policy analyst, I helped create a blueprint to redesign a state's children's mental health system to address accessibility. Getting people services earlier can often reduce the amount of treatment needed and prevent more serious cases of mental health. Understanding how to implement universal services was also a large part of my role. As a doctoral student, I have studied mental health at the state, national, and organizational levels. I studied the availability of SED or serious emotional disturbance programs across the country, elevating the need to expand availability. I analyzed positive mental health data at my university, highlighting where the university should increase mental health resources. This spring, I am excited to take Social Determinants of Health, and these funds would help cover that course. I hope to examine how government agencies address affordability and accessibility by integrating mental health services into community well-being programs. I have been directly affected by the lack of mental health services in communities, and while I cannot change the negative impact many of us have felt, I can help create a better future. I have thoroughly enjoyed contributing to improved access and affordability of mental health services and look forward to continuing that work.

"Thoughtful, innovative, and cross-discipline public policy can be one of the most innovative ways to move communities and the country forward, but our pipeline of politicians and policy experts do not reflect the diversity of this country." The idea of innovative cross-discipline public policy led me to pursue a combined master of public administration and master of social work degree. Additionally, I completed masters and PhD elective courses in sociology, criminology, and urban planning to gain a multidisciplinary perspective of social problems. I believe in the need to analyze policy issues from multiple frameworks, and that we have to understand the intersections of various systems (health, social welfare, education, criminal justice, environmental/planning) if we want to create substantive, long-term policy solutions. Before my current role as a policy analyst, I served as a fellow with Florida's Executive Office of the Governor. As a fellow, I also worked on determination reports responsible for determining whether a treatment or medical device should be covered under Medicaid. I often think back to my conversation with the agency's Chief of Staff who said, "All state agencies do important work, but the work that we do here is literally life and death for the people we serve." I will always remember my work in Medicaid, and how we have to make policy decisions with our most vulnerable in mind. More importantly, I think about my own quality of life, and how it changed drastically when Medicaid paid for two surgeries as a child. Even more than understanding my role as a policy analyst, I understood what those policies meant for me, and what it means for many others who look like me. During the fellowship, each fellow is required to submit a policy paper. These papers are expected to present innovative policy solutions addressing Florida's most pressing issues. I am proud to say that my paper was selected as one of the top 3 of 13 papers submitted. My paper challenged Florida's policymakers to redistribute funds to provide student loan repayments as a employee benefit to increase recruitment and retainment for child welfare workers. Because child welfare workers are often underpaid and overworked, there is a constant turnover that affects youth who are going through the system. These youth are predominately youth of color, so addressing this issue could have substantial benefits to our communities. While my paper was not selected for first place, the feedback I received confirmed my belief that we can be creative in how we solve policy problems, if we choose to be. Now as an analyst, I am excited about what I have accomplished so far and my future in public policy. As an analyst working in government oversight and accountability in Virginia, my role involves evaluating state government programs and presenting policy options. So far, I have evaluated and reviewed the performance of the state's debt collection and consumer protection programs in the attorney general's office and provided policy recommendations to the governor and legislature on marijuana legalization. Currently, I am reviewing recent legislative reforms to our state's juvenile justice system. While much of my work in social and racial equity has been informal, I am hoping to directly incorporate those elements into my work moving forward. The desire to better incorporate equity and other factors have led to my decision to return to school. This fall, I am applying to PhD programs in Public Policy and Social Work. As a doctoral student I hope to dive deeper into the ways in which we have and can incorporate equity into the policy development and implementation process. Specifically, how do we design policies that consistently and accurately take into account any past harms that previous policies have caused and how do we implement policies with the understanding that different communities have different resource levels and life experiences that could influence what we see at the program level. My hope is to build my policy and analytical skillset and eventually move up the ranks into a more senior level role in the policy world. Specifically, I hope to one day serve as a policy advisor working in federal government or leader of a nonprofit research/policy think tank. I want to continue to use my skills in data and research to drive policy options that best serve communities of color. The diversity in the public policy field is underwhelming. Currently, I am the ONLY person of color at my agency, and I've heard I am the 2nd Black analyst to ever work there. Sometimes it feels like the world is on my shoulders, but then I see the impact diversity has. Many times I have found myself having a difference in perspective or knowledge about policy issues, and I believe our policy solutions are improved because of this. So I spend my weekends and evenings on phone calls, in zoom meetings, and on social media platforms discussing ways to diversify the field. In addition to moving up as a senior policy expert, my other goal in the policy world is to increase access to this field, so we don't have to keep having an "only" in our policy focused agencies. The public policy world is in need of Black voices, and I am so proud to be one of them.