Gina founded Healthy Washington Heights in 2009 as part of the City of Chicago's Healthy Communities effort. She has 15 years of community engagement experience, particularly in community engaged research. Gina has developed a network of hundreds of community, faith, and patient advocacy organizations, and has worked extensively with the training and development of Community Health Workers. Gina is committed to building community capacity to become equitable partners on biomedical research teams. The long-term goal of this commitment is to increase minority participation in the biomedical research process, as well as STEM and biomedical research careers, in an effort to significantly decrease and/or eradicate health disparities for African Americans and people of color. Gina recently took the position as the Director of Community Engagement at the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center Hyde Park Campus.  Prior to this, she worked 11 years at Northwestern University in their Center for Community Health. She has also worked at UIC on Roosevelt Road at the Midwest Latino Health Research, Training and Policy Center as their field research coordinator, as well as Chicago State University in their Department of Health Studies as their community research liaison.