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Nahiely Reza knew her fluency in Spanish could be an asset to her work at Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan. But she didn’t anticipate some of the ways the language would open up new connections with the communities engaged in the research.

Reza said the realization that she could combine her cultural heritage, her natural community ties, and her public health expertise in the research process was one of the most valuable takeaways from her time as a student research assistant at Poverty Solutions, a university-wide initiative that takes an interdisciplinary approach to action-based research on new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty. 

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Sam Stragand

Reza graduated from U-M in December 2024 with a Master’s of Public Health degree and has moved back to her hometown of San Diego. Working at Poverty Solutions from the fall of 2023 through early 2025, she assisted with multiple projects including Guaranteed Income to Grow Ann Arbor (GIG A2) and an evaluation of community work at Brilliant Detroit, a nonprofit that takes a community-based approach to fostering early childhood success. Reza’s skill with Spanish and her empathy for research participants made her a valuable asset to the Poverty Solutions team. 

“Working with Nahiely was a joy. She brought a great attitude of curiosity to all of our work. She proved to be a particularly talented interviewer with the ability to empathetically connect with a parent while collecting organizational insights,” said Sam Stragand, senior program manager of Poverty Solutions’ Detroit Partnership on Economic Mobility, who supervised Reza’s work on the Brilliant Detroit project. 

Trevor Bechtel

Poverty Solutions Student Engagement and Outreach Manager Trevor Bechtel talked with Reza recently about her experience. This is an edited version of the conversation.

What did you enjoy about working at Poverty Solutions?

I think that what I really liked is that Poverty Solutions introduced me to a different way of doing research that aligns more closely with my own personal values of how to engage with participants and communities. I previously did research in psychology departments as an undergrad and then I volunteered doing some research at a local college here in San Diego. I worked with Spanish-speaking people there too, but parts of it didn’t feel right to me. When we cleaned up participant information, there were times when a person’s demographic information would be different between phase one and phase two of our work, and as researchers we would just make a decision about which ethnicity we were going to go with. In terms of culturally sensitive and relevant decisions in research, it didn’t feel good to me. But here at Poverty Solutions having people from multiple disciplines working on a project meant that we were able to take different perspectives not just from psychology but public health, policy, and community engagement, for instance. Just knowing that people who were in Poverty Solutions were very dedicated to addressing these social justice issues and saw the underlying roots and talked about the communities and the individuals that we worked with in a very positive way was really good for me. It was never condescending. It was always very person-centered.

Nahiely Reza (MPH ’24) worked as a student research assistant at Poverty Solutions. She’s pictured in Purépecha regalia for her graduation from U-M. (Photo provided by Nahiely Reza)

I remember when you and I were enrolling people into GIG A2 that one of the people we were talking to engaged you in a conversation about your indigenous Latin American heritage. Do you have any reflections on how that part of your identity helped shape your work?

I did engage with a lot of Spanish-speaking participants in Ann Arbor and a lot of them were immigrants. And I think just the way we understand community has an impact. For a long time, I didn’t really realize this was an indigenous approach because it was so natural to me, but in my parent’s hometown of Tingambato, Michoacán in Mexico, when people would greet each other they would always say, “How are we?” and we would respond, “We’re doing well.” It was always in community. We would never say, “How are you?” Some of the immigrants in Ann Arbor from Latin America do have indigenous heritage as well, and it’s definitely not talked about, right? We just say we are from Latin America. And, I think that in my conversations with some of those folks I would still pick up on this understanding of community. And it was a good check for myself, a different lens, to check in with myself and make sure that I was being ethical in the way we related to participants as a U-M researcher.

Tell me more about how you connected to the GIG A2 work.

When Leonymae Aumentado, the project manager for GIG A2, brought me on board, she talked right away about what we were doing to engage the Spanish-speaking community and had an interest in getting some materials translated. I wanted to make sure I could support that in any way I could. I was active at St. Mary Student Parish in Ann Arbor and I went to the Hispanic ministry coordinator and mentioned the work that I was doing with GIG A2. She shared with me that in Washtenaw County there is a WhatsApp group for Hispanic and Latino people and information is shared in that group. And so we sent out a message to that group. I really appreciated that when I brought ideas like that to Poverty Solutions, people were happy to go with them. When I started doing recruitment, I was really happy to see that there were people from all walks of life applying to this program. I think it broke down stereotypes for me and helped me check my biases about who the people that we are engaging with really are. It helps me grow as a person and as a researcher and as someone who engages with the community when those barriers and stereotypes are broken down.

It seems like you were able to go beyond simply using your skill with the Spanish language and provide some access to parts of the Latino community in Ann Arbor. Do you have further reflections on that?

There is a trust that comes from being active in a community, and so I was able to expand the reach of the program but also able to counter people’s distrust. Because there is a distrust from a community that is largely immigrant and undocumented, I think it is easier to engage with a community when you are involved in it than when you are just going into it without any kind of relationship or connection.

With GIG A2, the translation work was straightforward, but for Brilliant Detroit I learned so much about being a Spanish language research evaluator. This came across when I translated the focus group questions and the interview guide for individual interviews. One of the things I needed to think about was how does the community refer to Brilliant Detroit? Because Brilliant Detroit is kind of a mouthful to say in Spanish. And Brilliant Detroit has a network of hubs in neighborhoods across the city that are the core of their work. But how do you refer to a hub in Spanish? And so we asked the program managers, “How does the community talk about Brilliant Detroit or any of the specific hubs?” And so Brilliant Detroit became just “Brilliant” – with a very different pronunciation – and the hub is La Casita, or little house.

When we use the same language that people actually use rather than our research jargon it makes a better experience for participants. So I really appreciated it when Sam told me, “All right, you’re going to lead our Spanish evaluations.” I really appreciate all of the supervisors at Poverty Solutions who have asked me, “What do you think we should do?” It was a little scary at first to take the lead on this work, but it was really nice to know that I had these questions in the back of my head and that I was able to reach out to program managers at Brilliant and that they were about to share more and more about how their people understand how this work happens in the community.