Kevin Ferreira van Leer, Ph.D. an Assistant Professor at California State University, Sacramento, is deeply committed to the principles of civic leadership, participatory democracy, and social justice. He is an action researcher focused on equity and access to education and community resources with migrant populations in the U.S. Currently, Kevin is completing a mixed methods dissertation on Latino immigrant family’s decision-making on early childhood care with the aim of improving programming and policy towards equity and increased positive outcomes for families.

Kevin has worked at the nexus of community, research, and policy with migrant communities in New York City and the Greater Boston Area. Most recently, he has engaged in a participatory action research project with Boston College’s Center for Human Rights & International Justice (CHRIJ), Casita El Salvador, Women Encouraging Empowerment, Inc on language access for multilingual immigrant families in East Boston and Revere. Within the Greater Boston Area he has also collaborated closely with the Center to Support Immigrant Organizing and their initiative, the Network of Immigrant and African American Solidarity co-facilitating a participatory evaluation documenting their transformational relationship-building.

Partnership has often been a center of Kevin’s work. As a former Interim Director of Organizing at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, Kevin coordinated regional meetings across Massachusetts with grassroots groups to organize for local and state policy that promotes the rights and wellbeing of refugees and migrants in the Commonwealth. Previously, within New York City he worked with the Port Richmond Partnership to address community-identified needs of Educational Opportunity, and Immigrant Opportunity by combining academic civic engagement at Wagner College and community initiatives.

His work is undergirded by a commitment to human rights. As a part of the Migration and Human Rights project at CHRIJ, he collaborated on transnational programs with migrant sending communities in El Quiché in Guatemala. At Unitarian Universalist Service Committee he investigated human-rights abuses in the US Central American Minors In-Country Refugee program.

Kevin currently is a member of the Board of Trustees at his alma mater, United World College Costa Rica. To get in touch with Kevin, feel free to drop a line