Jackie is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin within the Educational Leadership and Policy department and works as a Graduate Research Assistant under the supervision of Dr. Liliana Garces. She currently works on a project, funded by the Spencer Foundation, that examines how law-based pressures, such as state legislation related to free speech, shape campus-wide inclusion policy. Prior to pursuing her PhD, Jackie received her M.Ed. from the University of Texas at Austin and her B.S. in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from the University of Florida. She has had a wealth of professional experiences across the P-20 educational pipeline including roles in K-12 instruction, non-profit management, educational technology, and higher education administration.

As a daughter of Cuban immigrants, Jackie’s research focuses on equity and access in higher education and the institutionalization of diversity initiatives through a historical and organizational lens. Her most recent funded project examines a Latino Campus Cultural Center and how through racialized organizational structures and policies, there is ultimately a cost for students, staff, and the broader community when institutionalizing diversity initiatives and spaces.

Jackie’s work as an interdisciplinary scholar utilizes public scholarship, like oral history, and community-based research to democratize knowledge and disrupt powers and structures historically present within knowledge production and dissemination. She serves as the Managing Editor for the US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal and is a Graduate Student Member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice. Her work has been recognized at major education and interdisciplinary conferences such as the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Oral History Association (OHA), the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), and the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS).