Mayán Alvarado Goldberg

About MayánAlvarado

Mayán was born and raised in Los Angeles in a multicultural family of Guatemalan, New Zealand, and Jewish descent. Growing up, she spoke Spanish, English, and used American Sign Language at home. The complexities of these identities taught her about the importance of community organizing within her schools and neighborhoods. As the daughter of public school teachers, she developed a deep love for education and aimed to change the ways that reproductive health, mental health, and social justice were presented in schools. She attended Northwestern University as a Posse Scholar and graduated in 2024 with a BA in Neuroscience and Global Health, and a minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies. She was awarded three consecutive university grants to conduct research under Dr. Emily Miller on collaborative care treatments for postpartum depression, published in Obstetrics & Gynecology. She was also selected to conduct archival research in London, where she studied Guatemalan midwives in the 1960s-90s. She continues to commit herself to reproductive justice through her training as a labor and postpartum doula, and as a medical advocate for Chicago’s rape crisis organization, where she accompanies survivors in the emergency department.

Outside of academics, Mayán costume designed throughout college for student theater productions, was an herbalism apprentice at an urban farm in South Chicago, and worked at Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art as a student associate, providing free public art talks and helping with a yearly student acquisition. As a current MPH student at Northwestern, Mayán works on reproductive justice, health equity, and medical language accessibility as a scholar at the Center for Health Equity and Transformation, and interns at Chicago Women’s Health center where she works on Spanish translations and clinical referrals. She hopes to one day become a physician-researcher who serves and learns from multicultural communities.