Dr. Flores is proud to be a lifelong product of the California public education system, from K- 12 to her PhD in Urban Planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She is an Associate Professor at California State University Long Beach in the interdisciplinary master’s program in Equity, Education & Social Justice. In this role, she trains students as emerging scholars and practitioners focused on justice, power, and resistance. She draws on current and community events to anchor academic ideas in everyday life and uses critical pedagogies to engage students in deep analyses of social and educational inequities from the local to the global.

In her research, Dr. Flores studies sex and gender-based harassment experienced online, in public spaces, and at academic conferences. Her contributions explore a range of topics including gendered public space, street harassment, Title IX, and the targeted harassment of faculty by members of the public. She is committed to public scholarship and civic engagement, and in her previous research as a Fellow with the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement she examined the ways in which targeted harassment may silence faculty, leading to self-censorship. Most recently, she completed a sex educator certification, noting the urgent need for accurate, non-shaming, justice-based sex education programming as a component of campus sexual assault prevention efforts.

Dr. Flores is a past fellow with The OpEd Project and her public writing has been featured in national outlets such as The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine Blog, YES! Magazine and Progressive Planning Magazine. Before returning to academia, Dr. Flores worked as a political messaging strategist and jury consultant, conducting focus group research for legal cases and political campaigns in more than thirty states.