Ari S. Gzesh, MSW

Ari S. Gzesh, MSW is a PhD candidate in Social Welfare at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice. Gzesh’s scholarly work tackles barriers and facilitators for sexual/gender-diverse youth and young adults’ (SGDY) wellbeing through three arms of research: 1) identifying risk-related psychosocial and behavioral constructs pertaining to health and mental health; 2) examining social support networks – specifically queer kinship – and its relationship to harm reduction; and 3) developing and evaluating clinical care interventions for SGDY that span systems across the social-ecological model. Their three-paper dissertation, titled “Understanding Psychosocial and Behavioral Constructs Related to PrEP Interest Among Trans-Masculine People Assigned Female at Birth,” garnered $30k in funding through the Penn Center for Mental Health and AIDS Research, a P50 NIMH-funded Center. Gzesh’s work has also been supported by the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics and the Eidos LGBTQ+ Health Research Initiative.

In addition to lived experience, their research agenda is informed by over a decade of direct practice. After earning a Master of Science in Social Work from Columbia University, they worked as a community-based clinician in the Bay Area of California supporting systems-involved youth experiencing sexual exploitation, substance use, and housing instability. Prior to pursuing their MSW, Gzesh taught for eight years in traditional and alternative classrooms, spanning from secondary schools to San Quentin Prison to domestic violence shelters.

While pursuing their doctoral studies, they served as a multi-year Fellow in Leadership Education and Adolescent Health at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, they co-founded Q+CARE Lab: LGBTQ+ Collaborative for Advocacy, Research, and Education. Gzesh is concurrently pursuing certificates in Implementation Science through Penn Perelman School of Medicine and Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies through Penn’s Center for Feminist, Queer, & Transgender Studies.