Meet Our Scholars
Jessie Garcia Gutiérrez
University of California, Berkeley
Social Welfare & Public Health
She/They
Flagship
Victoria's Secret & Co. Scholarship
Jessie is a proud transgender Chicana from Salinas, California. Her father is an immigrant field worker from Fresnillo, Zacatecas, México and her mother is from Brownsville, Texas and is a first-generation college graduate that now works as a teacher. Jessie graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2018. Through her lived experiences, Jessie has focused her personal and professional work on addressing the mental health needs of transgender people of color (POC). After graduating from UCLA, Jessie worked at a transgender health program at a community clinic in South Central Los Angeles doing workforce development workshops with transgender POC. In March 2019, she (along with two other trans colleagues) co-organized the first ever transgender job fair in South Los Angeles that had over 70 employers and over 700 trans job seekers from all over California. Set to graduate in May 2022, Jessie is a Master in Public Health and Master of Social Welfare candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on how institutions, organizations, and systems affect the mental health of transgender POC. Additionally, her internships have been focused on providing therapy for trans youth of color in the Bay Area. Jessie also created the Under the Same Colores podcast that centers the experiences of trans POC. In the future, Jessie is driven to become a therapist for transgender POC and to become a professor to educate on the disparities that transgender people face with the hopes of combating transphobia and creating more allies.