Thank you for visiting my site! I'm Debbie de Sagun, a public health doctoral student-scholar at Claremont Graduate University located in Southern California. Social impact and equity are my north stars. I weave my own lived experience as a daugher of immigrant parents together with my 15-year professional public health journey to champion social justice, women's empowerment, and human rights causes.
Welcome!
Learn about my prior and upcoming endeavors!
ABOUT
I hope that the next trek of my journey, post completing my doctorate degree, is to continue to be of service for women's and girls' rights, sustainability, and economic empowerment on a global platform at a non-governmental organization, private entity, or multi-lateral organization alongside teaching as a professor.
Currently, I am working on my doctoral dissertation and a paper highlighting the humanitarian crisis of human trafficking amongst refugees in conflict zones. I am open to other publication opportunities that have a hybrid focus on public health and gender equity.
I consider my career as my personal calling to contribute to this world through public health and social welfare service. So I am happy to share that my career path thus far has been devoted to social justice, advocacy, and systems change within a gender rights lens in Los Angeles for 15 years both in the non-profit and for-profit sectors (including job settings in clinical research, academia, corporate, government, and consulting). My leadership roles have centered on strategic advising, team governance, needs assessment creation, program design & execution, logic modeling, evaluation efforts, partnership establishment, and communications.
Outside of my hometown in Southern California, I have volunteered for social justice- and environmental health-driven projects in South Africa, Namibia, Honduras, and Cambodia. Initiatives, projects, trainings, travel, and courses that touch on sustainability, heritage, international relationship-building/exchange, and multiculturalism fuel my soul.
The weaving thread in my journey has been working and volunteering with organizations and on projects/programs/interventions which advance women's and girls' empowerment and address the underlying societal and sustainability factors that hinder them to fully thrive. Through these professional experiences in addition to my own personal story, I take pride that I have partaken in the larger fight against the gender inequity epidemic placing women and girls at higher risk to some of the world’s most oppressive issues: poverty, infectious dieasse, violence, and trafficking.
I obtained my Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, with a concentration in Global Studies & Human Rights, from Mount Saint Mary’s University. I then earned my Master of Public Health from the University of Southern California. I hold a certificate as a “Certified Health Education Specialist” from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, Inc. I also hold a certificate in "Inclusive Excellence in College Teaching" from the Center for Academic & Faculty Excellence at Claremont Graduate University.
I am pursuing my Doctor of Public Health degree with a focus on Applied Gender Studies at Claremont Graduate University.