Emily Dunsmore

Emily is originally from San Diego, California, but found herself on the East Coast to pursue her academic and professional passions in bridging cultures and championing diversity. She graduated in 2024 from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, receiving her Master’s in Public Health with a specialization in Health Education & Implementation Science.  

In her career, she continually strives to leverage her research training from both Johns Hopkins and her alma mater, University of California, Davis, where she earned her BS in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior with a minor in Spanish. This foundation is integral to her ability to operationalize evidence-based practices into effective program development and design research + evaluation methods to study barriers and facilitators in achieving programmatic goals. She believes equity, cross-sector collaboration, and cultural sensitivity are necessary for the sustainability and efficacy of a program. 

Emily's commitment to these principles is rooted in her identity. As a transracial adoptee from China, she is deeply shaped by her diverse background and recognizes that the circumstances for her advancement were in part gifts that her environment gave her. Thus, a large focus of her work has centered on pipeline programs that provide opportunities for underrepresented students to attain their educational and professional aspirations, as she has had in life. These experiences have been incredibly varied, including two years fostering educational cultural exchange in Madrid, Spain, three years working in California with both COSMOS and UC Davis freshman seminars, and most recently leading a higher education pathways program for Latinx youth in Baltimore City.  

It is with much sentiment that she now comes to APAICS and their political pipeline to use her skills and experience to uplift her own AANHPI community, and with it the exploration of her cultural heritage, in what she hopes will reverberate into progressive change in public service and society.