Paulina Sosa-Quintanilla, DrPH, MPH, CPH

Paulina Sosa-Quintanilla is a public health leader, data analyst, and communicator with roughly fifteen years of experience advancing health equity for underserved communities. A proud Tejana raised in Brownsville, Texas, along the border with Matamoros, Mexico, she serves as Executive Director and founder of Latinx Voces. This nonprofit is dedicated to health education and outreach. It began as a national effort connecting community leaders and families with trusted information and now pairs that reach with in-person outreach across South Texas's Rio Grande Valley, including colonias and rural communities. She also leads the Latinx Task Force, a sister national organization with more than 300 partners focused on improving access to health information in the Latinx community.

Her career began in policy and advocacy, where she worked for U.S. Senator Cornyn and a Texas congressman and gained perspective from both sides of the aisle. Although she once planned to become a lawyer, a practicum with the World Health Organization in Geneva redirected her toward data and informatics. She went on to spend four years as a lead data analyst in the flu and respiratory disease department at the Pan American Health Organization, followed by work with the American Public Health Association leading into the COVID period. More recently, she coordinated the Smithsonian's See Me Program, where she evaluated program effectiveness, launched Spanish-language offerings for national Latino audiences, and trained affiliates in Latino cultural competence and dementia information. She has also served as a graduate teaching assistant and R3ISE Science Communications Leadership Program fellow at Johns Hopkins.

A Gates Millennium Scholar, she studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She then earned her Master of Public Health in global health policy at The George Washington University, focusing on public health communications and GIS mapping. Her Doctor of Public Health in public health informatics from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health centers on examining health equity through data visualization. Skilled in R, Tableau, program evaluation, grant management, and partnership development, she has led work ranging from diabetes prevention among Latino populations to infectious disease surveillance across the Americas. Fluent in English and Spanish, she describes herself as a storyteller and woman of faith, guided by family, community, and a belief in storytelling's power to create lasting change.