Melody (she/her) is an alumna of Crafton Hills College and California State University, San Bernardino with her M.A. in Psychological Science. Her thesis focused on women’s experiences with sexual violence, including their feelings of self-blame, shame, and mental health difficulties. Much of her research is conducted within diverse areas such as LGBTQ+ community health, mental health treatment equity, and trauma experiences within at-risk communities, and she was a sexual assault crisis advocate for San Bernardino County. During her M.A. degree, she served as the Institutional Review Board’s student representative, taught two lab sections of undergraduate statistics, and was awarded the CSBS Outstanding Graduate Student and OSR Outstanding Graduate Researcher. She hopes to continue research that explores survivors’ feelings of shame and self-compassion in order to promote healing after violence and combat the pervasive stigma still attributed to sexual violence today. She is continuing her education as a clinical psychology Ph.D. student at the University of Tulsa in Fall 2022.