overview

• Mariluz Franco Ortiz, Ph. D., is a community social psychologist with more than 25 years of anti-racist work in Puerto Rio. She is a researcher at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, where she is coordinator of the Maintaining project, Engaging, and Tracking Alumni in Science and Health Research (METAS+). This program seeks to test the effectiveness of the Resilience Coaching workshop strategy to prepare undergraduate students for a successful transition to graduate programs in the fields of biomedicine and behavioral sciences. Also, Currently, she is CoPI with Dr. Ísar Godreau in a project titled: Visualizando la afrodignidad or Visualizing Afro-dignity, which seeks to address African heritage, Blackness, and anti-racism in Puerto Rico by analyzing elementary school social studies textbooks, particularly their visual content in the representation of Africa, enslavement, and Afro-Puerto Rican contributions to society in this US colony.

  In addition, Dr. Franco Ortiz is part of the Advisory Community of Colectivo Ilé, whose mission is to educate, organize, and investigate to strengthen anti-racist and decolonizing work that leads to changes in the community, academic, spiritual, psychological-social levels both in Puerto Rico and abroad. Among her contributions and community efforts are the collaboration in the illustrated workshop "África en mi piel, África en mi ser" (Africa on my skin and in my soul) and the educational workshop based on the book she co-authored entitled: " Pulling up myths from the root: guide for an anti-racist education of the African heritage in Puerto Rico”.