Long before she came to UCLA to study the intersection of health and culture, Cleopatra observed that "two people—given the very same experience—may have very different outcomes depending on how they perceive their experience, or how they hang onto their experience, or what they choose to learn from their experience."

She also understood that race, ethnicity, and culture are not necessarily interchangeable constructs. The daughter of immigrants, Cleopatra is ethnically Egyptian and racially African. "In this country, race is a defining feature if your race is visibly different from the majority," she says, "therefore, the social category that you fall into has a significant impact on your personal development and on how you experience the world around you."

Cleopatra has deeply personal questions about the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes. Her mother died giving birth to Cleopatra and her identical twin sister in an inner-city public hospital, leaving the family to grow up without her support and guidance. This experience has helped to forge a bond between Cleopatra and those whose poverty affects their everyday lives in hundreds of ways, large and small.

Now a doctoral student in psychology at UCLA, Cleopatra draws on all these resources as she conducts research to answer the question: Why do some women thrive during pregnancy and deliver healthy babies, while others do not? All of her life experiences "contribute to my character and affect the way I view science and scientific questions," she says. "They also offer me a lot of insight both in my work and in my own personal growth and approach to life."

Regarding the influence on her scientific perspectives, her life experiences—as well as her fieldwork in Los Angeles—have persuaded Cleopatra that "it’s time to move away from comparing people just by race or socioeconomic status because that’s just not explaining enough." More can be understood, she believes, by looking at culture, a construct that goes beyond skin color or ethnic heritage to embrace customs, values, beliefs, and behaviors.

While the American majority culture makes the individual primary, other cultures have a more collectivist perspective. Family bonds and extended kin networks may play a larger role in the lives of African, Asian, and Latino Americans, along with spirituality and faith. In some respects, these cultures provide important resources to pregnant women in terms of support during and after pregnancy, but other aspects of a given cultural context may have less positive impacts on a pregnancy.

Take, for example, the different ways people deal with stress. In general, African American culture is thought to focus more on being present in the moment—what some people might refer to as living mindfully—than on anticipating the future. Like meditation, living with an emphasis on the present may improve immediate mental health, but disregarding the potential long-term impacts of behavior can be detrimental to future physical health.

James Jackson, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan has said that African Americans buy mental health at the expense of physical health, or as Cleopatra phrases it, "What's bringing you joy or comfort today could be limiting your capacity for living optimally in the long run."

Cleopatra began her research not long after she arrived at UCLA, when Christine Dunkel Schetter, director of UCLA's Health Psychology Program, invited her to join the team engaged in a long-term study of differences in pregnancy outcomes. Cleopatra "has helped us be much more sophisticated about studying culture, especially the cultural values and related behaviors of African Americans," Professor Dunkel Schetter says. "She is a broad and creative thinker who has great potential to contribute to behavioral and health science."

Cleopatra is also "a warm, gracious person who is both soft spoken and interpersonally effective," her adviser says. "Her personality is one of her greatest strengths."

Besides the enormous support she draws from her twin sister and other family members, Cleopatra benefits from her father's powerful philosophy: "If you focus on your education and you just keep working, you will make your life better." As a result, Cleopatra says, "it never occurred to me that it would be impossible for me to go to a private school or to college at all." She applied to the University of Miami for her undergraduate work and won a full scholarship.

"I always wanted to be a psychologist, although my understanding of what a psychologist was—and what type of psychologist I wanted to be—changed dramatically over time," she says. In college, Dr. Sheri Johnson, her earliest and one of her most influential mentors, introduced her to the notion of a research career. For her honors thesis, Cleopatra worked with Dr. Johnson and Dr. Ron Durán to examine cultural differences in the way individuals display the symptoms of bipolar disorder, predicting that they would choose expressions that were more acceptable in their communities and that were more congruent with the values of their cultures.

Applying to UCLA for graduate work, Cleopatra was awarded a Eugene Cota Robles Predoctoral Fellowhip. She was barely unpacked when she applied to the National Science Foundation for a three-year fellowship, which she received, along with Ford Foundation and Jacob Javits fellowships.

Well on her way to an academic career that combines research and teaching, Cleopatra has still another goal in mind: some element of policy making or activism. "Ultimately, the people whose lives can be made easier, made better, are my motivation for pursuing a research career," she says.

For now, that activism takes the form of involvement in minority outreach at UCLA in an effort to encourage more minorities to apply for graduate studies at UCLA. Besides her knowledge of UCLA and the application process, Cleopatra feels she can also relate to certain challenges that may be more commonly faced by minorities, such as the need to negotiate multiple cultural identities, as Cleopatra does, between their home or community and the academic world.

She also knows the importance of the goal. As she told the NSF selection committee, "Quite personally, my own understanding and appreciation of education as a gift of empowerment is profound. I intend to share this message with my family, with my students and colleagues, and with as many people I can reach through writing and presentation."

Published in Winter 2005, Graduate Quarterly