Marvia Perez Cunanan

Marvia Perez Cunanan identifies as Filipino American and proudly neurodivergent, and was raised in the Central Valley of California. Marvia graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Asian American Studies and Sociology, and a minor in Feminist Studies. She was granted the Sucheng Chan Distinguished Achievement Award from UCSB Asian American Studies for academic excellence in the department, in addition to her involvement in extracurricular activities. Outside of academic pursuits, Marvia held several student organizing and advocacy roles as an undergraduate student, including: Commission on Disability Equity (CODE) Co-Chair, UCSB MultiCultural Center (MCC) Program Assistant, elected Associated Students UCSB External Vice President for Statewide Affairs, and University of California Student Association (UCSA) Campaigns Chair. In Marvia’s involvement with CODE, she transformed the Commission to be a student advocacy organization run by and for disabled students, rewriting its legal code to center disability justice and helping build the CODE website from scratch. With CODE and the MCC, Marvia planned and facilitated political education and community gathering spaces dedicated to promoting social justice aims. As EVPSA and with UCSA, Marvia helped organize effective cross-campus student lobbying, including guiding efforts for an ambitious state budget ask to increase the staffing capacity of UC disability support services that resulted in a combined $17.5M investment at the end of the year from UC campuses, the California state budget, and UC Regents. Within SP2, Marvia is dedicated to pursuing social policy research that weaves together critical scholarship of race and disability, health equity, and state-sanctioned suffering. She is hoping to pursue disability justice on a policy level, an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses public health approaches to behavioral health, education policy, mental health law, social welfare, and more. Marvia believes that strong communities make policing and carceral institutions obsolete. She is passionate about applying a disability justice lens to policy that can establish a better care infrastructure so historically oppressed communities of color can thrive, and building new systems of holistic care to serve the diverse disability community.