Thalia Blankson is a first-year graduate student at Arizona State University. She is pursuing a Master’s in International Affairs and Leadership. Thalia holds both an associate degree in Liberal Arts and a bachelor’s in Political Science and History. Her research focuses include Pakistan-China and China-South Asia relations; political violence, the politics of religion and ethnicity, and the politics of communism and authoritarianism. She also has an interest in global health, at the intersections of social justice, maternal, and child health. She hopes to plan and implement public health programs and policies that can begin to close the disparities seen in health outcomes across race and class in the United States and abroad. She is driven toward a second master’s degree in public health, with a concentration in epidemiology. She enjoys teaching and engaging in provocative discussions with peers and students alike. In her free time, she enjoys languages such as Mandarin, Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, German and Russian.