Valeria Chambers is founder of Blacks Voices: Pathways4Recovery, a state-wide advocacy and leadership support network for Blacks and African Americans. She has used her lived experience as a Certified Peer Specialist trainer and facilitator in the mental health peer support arena for the past 18 years. Valeria is a research consultant at the Health Equity Research Lab, Cambridge Health Alliance & the Center of Excellence for Psychosocial and Systemic Research, Massachusetts General Hospital. She works with researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders to address mechanisms underlying mental health care disparities to ensure that the lived experience perspective is present throughout all phases of the research process: community engagement, co-creation/co-learning, conceptualization of the research question, data collection, analysis, interpretation and finally dissemination back to communities. Her goal is to increase access to trauma informed, culturally responsive mental health services for underserved communities via advocacy, research and peer support services. In her spare time Valeria has been enjoying all the free trainings and workshops suddenly available on Zoom, playing with friends with fur, practicing yoga and watching K-Pop romcoms on Netflix.