Valeria Ceballos is a first-year MPP fellow (‘22) at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA. Her policy interests are international development, immigration, social policy, and comparative policy. Currently, she is a graduate student researcher (GSR) for the Undocumented Student Program (USP) at UCLA and is working on several research projects and reports to further advocate for the social and economic gaps undocumented and underprivileged students experience. She was recently published by the University of Chicago Harris Public Policy and Pixera Global through the Inter-Policy School Summit of 2021. She is originally from Chile, but has lived most of her life in Los Angeles, CA. She has an extensive background in the non-profit field and actively
volunteers to assist underrepresented and socially disenfranchised immigrant communities. Before starting her MPP, she was a transfer undergraduate student at UCLA where she majored in Anthropology and minored in Labor Studies. At UCLA, she focused on socioecology, immigrant rights and international human rights, culture, race and history, health care for American Indians, and urban anthropology. These concentrations served to prepare her for her graduate education in public policy and to
better understand intersectionality within current social dilemmas, such as the effects of policies on low-income, underrepresented, and disenfranchised communities. She is eager to learn and find better ways to mend policies and decisions that augment social disparities as well as creating new options that are conscious of our world’s future.