Nicole Mendoza is a PhD candidate at the School of Communication and Information here at Rutgers. She is a first-generation student originally from LA with Mexican roots but has been living in NJ for two years now. Her main area of study is health communication, specifically regarding the mental health of black and brown populations. This is a very personal issue to her since she comes from an immigrant household where mental health is not brought up often. She didn’t know what mental health was, and once she finally learned, she decided that we need mental health workers to be all-inclusive. She recently submitted an abstract about older Latinos and how they use social media to engage with cancer information online with platforms such as Facebook. Outside of her academic studies, she enjoys hiking, listening to reggaeton, and watching movies. After graduating from Rutgers, she is considering a postdoc but hopes to work in a clinical setting and focus on a systemic or equity-based environment.