Award Recipients
Life Paths Research Center offered eight travel scholarships for scholars and advocates for presentations that focus on under-served or disadvantaged communities.
Four Life Paths Promising Scholars and three Promising Advocates were named for ResilienceCon 2024. We are proud to announce the 2024 recipients of the Life Paths Promising Scholar & Advocate Awards!
Life Paths Promising Scholars
Enoch Amponsah
Enoch Boafo Amponsah is a PhD student at the School of Social Work, Rutgers University. His research interest and publications involve interpersonal violence and child maltreatment prevention, gender issues and social work education. Prior to joining Rutgers, he obtained his masters in Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation at the University of Oxford, UK.
Juan Benavides
Juan Lorenzo Benavides, a Ph.D. student in Social Welfare at The Ohio State University, focuses on leveraging health services to support resilience in abused and neglected minoritized youth. With a BSW from the University of Texas and an MSW from Washington University in St. Louis, his expertise spans social work and mental health. Juan’s research includes early childhood resilience, child welfare, mental health, and trauma, employing diverse methods like qualitative and quantitative analysis. Juan also works as a Pediatric ER Social Worker at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and has prior experience in various healthcare settings.
Elaina Armora Langoni
Eliana Armora Langoni is a doctoral student at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill. She has worked in the development and testing of an online dating violence prevention program for adolescents exposed to inter-parental violence. Her interests include violence prevention and mental health, with a focus on Latinx and migrant communities.
Shelleta Ladonice
Shelleta Ladonice is a PhD Candidate in Public Affairs- Social Work Track at the University of Central Florida. She received her BSW from the University of South Florida, and her MSW from the University of Southern California. Her research interest centers on equitable and culturally appropriate access to health, mental health, and social services (especially among Haitian immigrants and refugees), with the goal of informing culturally appropriate interventions. Shelleta is a Graduate Research Associate with the Violence Against Women Cluster at UCF, focusing on projects related to screening for intimate partner violence among college students and service access/utilization for survivors.
Life Paths Promising Advocates
Vanesa Mercado Diaz
Vanesa Mercado Diaz, MA is a Research and Evaluation Specialist at Esperanza United. She received her master’s in Human Rights and Public Policy where her research focused on gender-based violence in Latine communities and Latin America. Her work with Esperanza’s Research and Evaluation team entails increasing knowledge of Latin@ experiences through culturally responsive programs, research, and evaluation while promoting social justice in the field of gender-based violence.
Julia Stavola
Julia Stavola is a recent graduate student of Boston University where she earned her masters of science in criminal justice in crime analysis. Her research focuses include but are not limited to: strength-based resilience in urban youth, mental health impacts of crime, violence prevention and intervention, trauma responses in system-impacted populations, and victimization of cybercrime.
Yunzi Yu
Yunzi Yu is an LMSW in New York State. Ms. Yu got her master’s degree from the University of Michigan in 2022 and specialized in the welfare of children and families and research. She currently works at CARES, a non-profit mental health clinic in NY. She provides comprehensive and specialized care for individuals with developmental disabilities and mental health challenges. Ms. Yu believes everyone deserves a better life and every child should thrive. Her goal is to help people with mental health concerns and/or developmental disabilities obtain the quality care and compassionate support they need to achieve their full potential.