Bio

Odia was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut with origins from Guinea, West Africa. She has a Bachelors of Arts in Cognitive Science and Political Science (‘19) and Masters in Public Health (‘20) from the University of Connecticut. Through these disciplines, she aspires to be an elected official.  During her undergraduate career, she was a Rowe Scholar, a New England Scholar, a member of Pi Alpha Sigma, Phi Beta Kappa, and served two terms on the Executive Boards of Sisters Inspiring Sisters and the African Students’ Association. Additionally, she worked as a tutor at the University Writing Center in the library, and also as a Writing Fellow, conducting weekly discussion sections for ENGL 1010S classes with first-year SSS students in the Fall. Her involvement with first-year students continued as she served as the Campus Ambassador for New Haven Promise. In the summer of 2017, she participated in the Summer Health Professions Education Program, an initiative by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in Seattle, WA, studying health disparities within different populations in the state of Washington. As a research intern at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, she studies the media interpretation of emotional intelligence curriculums in public school. She completed her Master’s with the thesis, “The Denial of Black Victimhood: Examining Attitudes of Sexual Assault and Victim-Blaming on a College Campus, A Continued Analysis” where she studies the prevalence victim-blaming of Black women on college campuses as it relates to instances of sexual assault. Currently, she is the Advocacy and Policy Fellow at the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance.

Odia describes herself as an interdisciplinary scholar who specializes in equity research for marginalized populations through community-centered practices, and health and social policy.