Hi Everyone!

My name is Maya and I’m a first-year Master’s Student in Comparative Media Studies. I grew up in LA (San Pedro, more specifically) and I’m trying to be more like my grandparents. 

Currently, I work in the Imagination, Computation, and Expression Lab with Professor Fox Harrell, and am focusing on how the design of social network algorithms creates different affordances for different types of users, and more specifically how that process can lead to anti-black public spaces and/or generative political discourse.

My undergraduate degree is in American Studies, but I’ve also been trained as a User Experience designer and have worked as a UX Designer and Usability Researcher. When I was living in San Francisco, I helped organize Code for San Francisco, a volunteer civic technology group that worked to solve city problems with technology. I felt like most of the civic technology spaces I came across were strangely disconnected from community organizations and thus were limited in what problems they could solve and how inclusive they were able to be. I would like to try different approaches, such as codesign, to solving community/political problems with technology.

Looking forward to working with you all soon!

maya