The APPAM Equity & Inclusion Young Professional Fellowship will support young professionals from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds at the APPAM Fall Research Conference. Applicants must be within five years of receiving their master's or PhD Degrees. The recipients will be recognized for their accomplishments. They will also have opportunities to formally network with each other, Student Equity and Inclusion Fellowship Recipients, and with Policy Council and Diversity Committee members. They will also have many opportunities to informally network with other students and professionals during the Annual Fall Research Conference.
Congratulations to the 2025 Equity & Inclusion Fellowship recipients!
Ishara Casellas Connors, Texas A&M University
Daman Chhikara, University of California, Irvine
Stella Chong, NYC Commission on Racial Equity
Ángel Gonzalez, Fresno State University
Hojung Lee, Rice University
Ishara Casellas Connors
Dr. Ishara Casellas Connors is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Service and Administration in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Her research, teaching, and service activities are dedicated to examining both the policy and management of advancing equity in higher education. Her first strand of work considers the intersection of immigration and education—developing research that looks at how federal, state, and nonprofit actors shape integration pathways for displaced individuals, intersecting with educational opportunities. Furthermore, Dr. Casellas Connors examines how demographic shifts, particularly the increase in Latine students in higher education, impact organizational behavior. In doing so, she has drawn attention to how institutional practices foster or hinder success for Latine and Afro-Latine individuals across public and nonprofit sectors. Across this work, Dr. Casellas Connors considers how actors—from university presidents to governing boards—navigate shifting attention to equity and what their communication reveals about institutional priorities. Dr. Casellas Connors holds a PhD from Boston College in Higher Education, an MA from Columbia University in Higher and Postsecondary Education, and a BA from Clark University in Business Management.
Daman Chhikara
Before beginning his doctoral studies, Daman worked with a nonprofit supporting career development centers for youth in urban slums in India, where he mobilized students and taught soft skills. He earned his PhD in Education Policy from Michigan State University, where his research focused on how racial dynamics and student–teacher relationships shape chronic absenteeism in early grades. Now a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Irvine, he examines developmental education reforms in community colleges, using mixed methods to study how policies affect math access and success for underserved students. His enduring question—how traditionally marginalized students experience learning in classrooms—continues to guide his work. He believes data can tell powerful stories when rooted in empathy and justice.
Stella Chong
Stella K. Chong is a Research and Policy Associate at the New York City Commission on Racial Equity (CORE). In her role, she supports community-driven research and policy work to ensure that CORE upholds the city mandate of holding the City of New York accountable for advancing equity and increasing community voices in government decision-making. Stella also has experience conducting community outreach and community-based participatory research with Asian American immigrant communities in NYC. She has published in multiple leading peer-reviewed journals, including the American Journal of Public Health, Health Affairs, and the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, among others. She has also served on the board of the Asian American Pacific Islander Caucus in official affiliation with the American Public Health Association. As a native New Yorker, Stella is grateful to serve her city and give back to the communities that inspired her to uplift their voices and advocate for their needs. She is a first-generation college graduate and received her Bachelor's degrees in Anthropology and Health & Human Biology from Brown University. She holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, with a focus on Maternal, Child, Reproductive, and Sexual Health, from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health.
Ángel Gonzalez
Ángel de Jesus González, Ed.D. (he/they/elle) is a tenure track Assistant Professor of Higher Education Administration and Leadership (HEAL) at Fresno State University. As a first-generation queer-nonbinary Latinx, joto, they engage their scholarship through jotería epistemologies. Dr. Gonzalez’s research agenda focuses on interrogating power relations within higher education systems embedded with cisheteropatriarchy and compulsory genderism by examining how these racialized structures engage minoritized peoples broadly and Queer and/or Trans People of Color (QTPOC) communities specifically across varying roles (i.e. students, leaders, faculty) within organizational contexts as way to unearth how structural inequities are maintained and reproduced via policy formulation and implementation.
Dr. González's foundational research has been published in many leading higher education journals such as Innovative Higher Education (IHE), the Journal of Higher Education (JHE), the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education (JDHE), and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (IJQSE). Prior to Dr. González's appointment at Fresno State, they were a postdoctoral scholar in the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California (USC) Rossier School of Education. They are a Faculty Affiliate for the Community College HigherEd Access Leadership Equity Scholarship (CCHALES) research collective at San Diego State University (SDSU) and the USC Pullias Center for Higher Education Shared Equity Leadership project.
Hojung Lee
Hojung Lee is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Sociology at Rice University. As a first-generation scholar, Hojung's research focuses on educational inequality, examining how resource allocation decisions impact equity and opportunities for disadvantaged students. Currently, she is investigating how housing voucher programs affect student educational outcomes using administrative data from the Houston area.
Her work employs quasi-experimental methods to reveal how seemingly neutral program structures can perpetuate educational disparities for traditionally underserved students. She has published research in Education Finance and Policy and Peabody Journal of Education, contributing evidence-based insights to ongoing policy debates. She is a Just Education Policy Institute (JEPI) Fellow (2025) and an Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Equity and Inclusion Fellow (2025). Hojung obtained her Ph.D. in Education and Social Policy from the University of Delaware.
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