Meet the Steering Committee

Christina Valeros (she/her) is a program manager at Small Business Services, and a research assistant for the Chinese-American Family Alliance for Mental Health (CAFAMH). She was formerly an Urban Fellow at the Taxi and Limousine Commission working on initiatives to provide mental health services for licensees. Prior, she worked in youth advocacy and education. She is interested in collective healing practices as a way to uplift communities of color.

Cindy Gray (she/her) is a senior program coordinator for ParentCorps at the Center for Early Childhood Health and Development in the NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Department of Population Health, and the youth program coordinator for the Chinese-American Family Alliance for Mental Health (CAFAMH). As a former early childhood special educator, biracial Asian-American, and LGBTQ+ woman, Cindy’s work has always centered around the intersection of social-emotional development/well-being and other marginalized identities. She lives in Queens, NY with her wife and a rotund, 14 pound tortoiseshell cat named Virginia.

Florence Almeda (she/her) is a research coordinator at Columbia School of Nursing with a passion for exploring mental, sexual, and reproductive health inequities through an intersectional lens, particularly among Asian American and/or immigrant communities. She was chosen to be a 2022-2023 NYC Urban Fellow, where she worked at the the Bureau of Epidemiology at DOHMH and served as one of the AAPI ERG Co-Leads. She graduated from Tufts University with a BA in Community Health and Music in 2022. 

Hân Nguyễn, LMSW (she/her/quýt), is a queer, cis-gender woman and part of the Vietnamese Refugee diaspora. She was born in the Philippines Refugee Camp and raised in Southern California's Little Saigon. As a first-generation college student, she began her academic journey at a community college and later graduated from UCLA with a BA in Psychology and Early Childhood Development. During her time at UCLA, Hân actively organized with her peers, focusing on arts, activism, and social justice programming with youth in South Central, Los Angeles. It was while volunteering at Stuart House, a treatment center for child survivors of sexual assault, that Hân felt drawn to social work. Hân's pursuit for social work led her to her first-ever plane ride, taking her from California to New York City to attend NYU Silver School of Social Work. There, she also co-created an API student organization and organized for curriculum changes and educated the larger NYU community on the API community. She earned her Master's degree in Social Work and spent her work in public health, population health, and organizing. 

Hân Nguyễn is a lifelong anti-racist organizer, educator, and social worker based in New York City. She is an Antiracist Organizer and Trainer with the People's Institute For Survival and Beyond, collaborating with fellow leaders to Undo Racism in the Northeast Region. Hân also plays a role in the New York Coalition for Asian American Mental Health (NYCAAMH), organizing and serving on its Executive Committee. Hân is an educator at John Jay CUNY, where she teaches with an anti-oppressive lens to future human service and social work providers. She has made contributions to reports, including the first API Health Report in NYC, the 2023 NYC True Cost of Living Report, and efforts with the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANPI) in response to AANHPI community needs related to COVID-19 resources, in collaboration with DOHMH and NYCAAMH.

Linh An, Ph.D. (she/her) is the Executive Director of the Chinese-American Family Alliance for Mental Health (CAFAMH) and the Multilingual Learner Specialist (MLL) for the Hunter College AANAPISI Project (HCAP). Her training as an ethnographer informs her approach to teaching, research, and community work that address social inequities. She initially joined CAFAMH as part of her dissertation research on Chinese immigrant women caring for family members diagnosed with mental illness. Through here leadership, CAFAMH develops holistic mental health interventions for Asian American families and youth. Linh led the development of a psychoeducation program in partnership with NYU for limited English proficient (LEP) Chinese caregivers. Additionally, she is building a holistic wellness intervention for Asian American college students that integrates psychoeducation, professional development, and racial identity exploration. Linh is a first-generation college graduate with a long history of working with underserved Asian American students in NYC. As the MLL at HCAP, she helps develop academic and research skills seminars and co-directs the undergraduate research program. Linh was one of the lead scholars, helping NYC’s Department of Education create a social studies curriculum about AAPI history and contemporary experience. She is currently on the Board of Charles B. Wang Community Health Center. Linh received her bachelor’s degree from Queens College and her PhD in Anthropology from UCLA.       

Sahnah Lim, PhD, MPH, MIA (she/her) is an assistant professor who is leading the Gender Equity scientific track and Mental Health scientific track at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Department of Population Health, Section for Health Equity. As a health equity researcher, Dr. Lim conducts applied, community-engaged studies that seek to address gender-related health issues among hard-to-reach populations such as sex workers and immigrant survivors of gender-based violence, including among Asian American populations. Her research uses intersectionality and syndemics frameworks to understand how multiple marginalization impacts mental and sexual health outcomes.

Liza King, MPH (she/her) is a research scientist at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She produced a report to highlight the health of Asian and Pacific Islander New Yorkers which planted the seed for this symposium while collaborating with Linh An, Sahnah Lim, and Han Nguyen. She is passionate about data disaggregation, committed to the health of marginalized populations and advocates for the visibility of AAPIs, most urgently in mental health spaces. She is also a mom to two children and just wants to figure out how to address the mental health needs of her family.