Jean Louis is a Ph.D. Candidate at Emory University School of Nursing. As a first-generation Haitian immigrant, she is among the first in her family to graduate from college and will be the first to obtain a graduate degree. As a labor and delivery nurse who’s worked in multiple hospitals across the southeastern United States, Ms. Jean Louis has first-hand experience with the inequities that people of color face when receiving maternal healthcare. More specifically, she believes these inequities are rooted in racism and pervasive discrimination within healthcare systems. Her research investigates modifiable risk factors to prevent adverse maternal health inequities that plague the Black birthing community in the United States. Her dissertation, funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research (1F31NR020575-01), uses a mixed methods exploratory sequential design to 1) quantitatively examine the impacts of racial discrimination and disrespectful maternity care on severe maternal morbidity among Black birthing people in the United States and 2) qualitatively explore the lived experiences of birthing people who experienced high rates of racial discrimination and disrespectful care. She has co-authored three peer-reviewed manuscripts and has three four-authored manuscripts pending publication. Ms. Jean Louis is an Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society Scholar and Birth Equity Research Fellow at the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC), where she provides research and evaluation support for NBEC’s programmatic teams and informs organizational research and evaluation practices that center Black birthing people and decolonized research methodologies. She leads a quantitative data analysis of the Maternal Mortality Review Information Application (MMRIA) data set from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Maternal Mortality Prevention Division of Reproductive Health, looking at the impacts of racism on maternal mortality. This work will further elucidate the relationship between racism, respectful care, and maternal morbidity outcomes among Black birthing people.  Ms. Jean Louis has taken advanced teaching courses to enhance her teaching methodology and pedagogy skills. Her areas of independent teaching interest include clinical health, social determinants of health, clinical simulation, and evidence-based practice at the undergraduate and master’s levels. At Emory University, she serves in various organizations and committees, including as former president of the Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing Ph.D. Nursing Student Association, where she facilitates initiatives to increase mental health support for nursing Ph.D. students and increase the diversity of incoming Ph.D. students and faculty members who mentor and teach within the Ph.D. program. She is the student representative for Emory University’s Laney Graduate School Student Council and research support representative for Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing Divisional Community and Diversity Committee. Outside of the academic setting, Ms. Jean Louis assisted the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in developing tools and resources to support state maternal mortality review committees in adopting a consistent approach to determining if discrimination, structural racism, and interpersonal racism contributed to a pregnancy-related death. She’s served as co-chair of the health committee for the North Fulton National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which strives to ensure the educational, political, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and discrimination.  Ms. Jean Louis’ long-term career goal is to be an independent nurse researcher and a leader in research on maternal health disparities among marginalized populations. She aims to develop and implement anti-racist strategies to improve maternal health among these populations.