Award Recipients
Life Paths Research Center offered eight travel scholarships for scholars and advocates for presentations that focus on under-served or disadvantaged communities.
Four Life Paths Promising Scholars and three Promising Advocates were named for ResilienceCon 2025. We are proud to announce the 2025 recipients of the Life Paths Promising Scholar & Advocate Awards!
Life Paths Promising Scholars
Clement Amponsah
Clement Amponsah is a doctoral (DPhil/PhD) student at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. He holds an MPhil in Development Studies from the same university. His research interests include resilience theory and policy discourses, environmental and social (in)justice, indigenous knowledge systems, discourses of (de)coloniality and (bio)power. Clement is a Project/Program Facilitator for UNESCO Center for Peace based in Maryland, USA. He is a Team Member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research project on ‘Decolonising Resilience from the Global South: African Voices in Conversation’ (Resilience Voices) which convenes workshops in Ghana, Rwanda, and South Sudan.
Reagan Cole
Reagan Cole, member of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, is a graduate research assistant in the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. She is interested in researching social determinants of Indigenous health including education and social/community contexts.
Inès Huynh
Inès Huynh is a doctoral student at the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong. With a BSc in Psychology from the University of Exeter and an MSc in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, her research focuses on violence against children, childhood trauma, and migration from a strength-based perspective. She also has research and work experience on topics related to child labor, women’s labor force participation, migrant workers’ rights, sexual and gender-based violence, and juvenile justice systems.
Marlaina Maddux
Marlaina Maddux LCSW, is pursuing a PhD in Health Behavior Health Promotion in the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona. She earned her MSW in Clinical Social Work at Florida International University. She is a mental health therapist providing person-centered treatment for trauma, substance use, depression, and anxiety. As a researcher, her work addresses mental health disparities in the context of historical trauma and systemic injustice. Marlaina’s dissertation research is focused on reframing Indigenous resilience as an empowered act of survivance and self-determination through the promotion of culturally centered Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs).
Kristina Ray-Bennett
Kristina Ray-Bennett, LCSW, LSSW, RYT-200, is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Social Work at Indiana University and a project manager for a U.S. Department of Education-funded initiative. With over 15 years of experience, including 13 as a Clinical Child and Family Therapist and two as a school social worker, Kristina has dedicated her career to enhancing mental health frameworks for vulnerable populations. Her research focuses on integrating mindfulness and social connectedness within MTSS to foster empathy and resilience in education. Kristina also applies her yoga teacher training to develop targeted interventions, notably improving academic outcomes through mindfulness practices.
Life Paths Promising Advocates
Meghna Bhat
Dr. Meghna Bhat is an independent gender and social justice consultant, prevention educator, feminist scholar, and most importantly, a multidisciplinary storytelling artist. As a proud first-generation South Asian immigrant, she found her calling in the power of storytelling in fostering community building, finding resilience, intergenerational healing, and cultural and narrative change in our communities using an anti-oppression, accessible and ethical lens. As a 2022 Seeding Creativity Individual Artist Grant recipient, Dr. Bhat created Gulabi Stories: A South Asian Healing Initiative, a multidisciplinary project that highlights beautiful stories of healing within the larger South Asian diaspora.
Isabella Caldwell
Dr. Isabella Caldwell is originally from Northeast Ohio and went to the University of Akron to study biology with minor specializations in chemistry, music, and Spanish. Her medical training occurred at The University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences. She matched at The University of Florida for adult psychiatry residency and trained there for three years prior to fast-tracking to child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship. Isabella is a current second-year child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her professional interests are therapy, trauma, advocacy, and collaborative/school-based care models.
Noah Gokul
Noah Gokul (they/them) is a multi-disciplinary artist, trainer, and Program Manager at the Institute for the Development of Human Arts. They grew up in Oakland, CA/unceded Ohlone land, and identify as a person with trauma and sensitivities to the world around them. Noah has worked in the mental health field as a crisis hotline counselor and later a peer specialist, using their own lived experience and holistic modalities to support young adults. They have facilitated in a wide variety of settings, at the intersections of anti-oppression, trauma, incarceration, Caribbean ancestry, music, and mental health.
Lindsey Silverberg
Lindsey Silverberg is the Deputy Director at Network for Victim Recovery of DC (NVRDC). In this capacity, Lindsey works to ensure seamless delivery of survivor services in the acute crisis response, advocacy and case management, legal, and therapeutic programs. Her responsibilities range from building infrastructure and support for direct service staff, to educating the local and national community about trauma, and thinking big with NVRDC’s Executive Director on how to help survivors achieve survivor-defined justice. She received her B.A. from the University of Maryland and her M.A. from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
