Karla G. Gonzales Garcia

Karla G. Gonzales Garcia is originally from Iquitos, Peru. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the Universidad de San Martin de Porres in Lima, Peru. While completing her degree, she became an intern for a non-profit organization in Peru that provided crisis counseling for street-children who had been sexually assaulted. After graduating, Karla worked with kindergarten children with learning disabilities for three years. Karla then moved to the United States thirteen years ago, and she initially spent most of her time working with victims and survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual violence, and immigrant rights advocacy in San Miguel County, Colorado. Her passion for social and racial justice motivated her to pursue her graduate degree in ethnic studies with a certification in women and gender studies at Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, CO. While pursuing her graduate degree, Karla worked as an outreach and education specialist providing sexual and reproductive health education programs and access to health services for marginalized populations. She decided to expand her research skills and diligently worked as a research assistant for a partnership between Colorado State University and the Restorative Justice Institute, to address the ethnic and racial disparities on achievement and retention gap of minority students in schools. After finishing her coursework, Karla became the co-interim director for the agency she used to work for in Telluride, CO. Karla continuously works to be grounded in decolonial methodologies, methods of research, and social justice praxis in order to achieve her long-term career goals of influencing policy making and advocacy based on meeting unique community needs.