Jesica Siham Fernández is an Associate Professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at Santa Clara University. She received her PhD in Social Psychology and Latin American & Latiné/x Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2024, she was named as the recipient of the 2025 Schuman-Fulbright Fellowship, which allowed her to pursue archival research at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy in Spring/Summer 2025. As a Fulbright Scholar, Jesica documented the development of the Young European Federalist (YEF) movement, specifically the sociopolitical discourses that supported economic, migrant and environmental transnational collaboration among European youth. Trained as a community-social psychologist, Jesica’s research is grounded in values of liberation, decoloniality and transformative justice, and engage community-based and participatory action research (PAR) to develop action oriented projects and collaborations to support young people, community organizers, student activists and Latiné/x families. Guided by her prior experiences as a youth organizer, she facilitates and oversees the Youth for Justice Project – an afterschool program at a local middle school in San José where in collaboration with SCU undergraduates, she engages youth in arts and advocacy action-oriented projects that are informed critical literacies, as well as environmental justice. Her expertise is in the areas of sociopolitical development and well-being at the intersections of environmental justice. Jesica is the co-editor on the Handbook of Decolonial Community Psychology (Springer, 2024), and author of the award winning book Growing Up Latinx: Coming of Age in a Time of Contested Citizenship (New York University Press). Currently, Jesica is working on an edited book volume Decolonial Psychology Praxes (Routledge Press, forthcoming) with colleagues Drs. Sunil Bhatia (Connecticut College, USA) and Christopher Sonn (Victoria University, Australia), which will highlight Indigenous, feminist, and youth-driven grassroots art-centered actions, as well as intergenerational movements for liberation, community health and environmental sustainability. Established to recognize early career excellence in scholarship and service, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI, APA Division 9) awarded Jesica the 2024 Michael Alexander Early Career Award. A year prior, the Society for Community Research & Action (SCRA, APA Division 27) named her the recipient of the 2023 Early Career Award.