This year, the WGSS Department welcomed May Navarra back to campus as the keynote speaker for our commencement ceremony.
May Navarra is a two-time alum of Stony Brook University. They completed their first degree here – a B.A. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, along with a minor in Biology – in 2018. That year, the WGSS Department selected May as the winner of the Terry Alexander Award to support their plans to pursue a career in health advocacy. May had just been accepted into the Master’s of Public Health program on our campus and had signed on to work at what, at the time, was the new LGBTQ* Center. Throughout their time at Stony Brook, May played a crucial role in fostering an inclusive and interdisciplinary gender and sexuality studies community while also fiercely advocating for social, economic, and health justice on campus and beyond.
As a student, May aspired toward a career in biomedical research that would resist simplistic categorizations and, instead, enact an intersectional queer feminist praxis. And that’s exactly what they’ve done! Since completing their MPH, May’s professional work has addressed the complex and overlapping health inequities in relation to reproductive justice, immigrant rights, and LGBTQ advocacy. Today, May works as a researcher of transgender health at Boston University’s GenderCare Center, which provides accessible, individualized, and comprehensive gender-affirming care while also advancing education, research, and advocacy efforts across New England and beyond. May’s current research focuses on improving the way identity-based data is collected from patients for electronic medical records. As a firm believer in the importance of making sure research teams look like the populations being studied, May is proud to be part of the growing body of trans researchers working in the field of trans healthcare.
In their keynote address, May reflected on their academic journey through Stony Brook and offered sound advice for moving into the world as a WGSS graduate. Please enjoy this video of their truly inspiring remarks!