Yesenia Vargas is a Mitigation Records Specialist with the Sentencing Advocacy Group of Evanston. Previously, she served as a qualitative researcher with the Center for Research on Women and Gender and OpenResearch, where she conducted in-depth interviews and led research on maternal health, economic insecurity, and the impacts of unconditional cash transfer programs. Across grant-funded and contract research projects at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Keiser Social and Behavioral Research Firm, she has focused on documenting how institutions shape individual lives and on how qualitative evidence can illuminate experiences often overlooked within legal, medical, and social systems. Yesenia is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago, where her dissertation examines the medicalization of childbirth-related trauma and how psychiatric diagnoses shape understandings of harm, responsibility, and structural inequality. She earned a B.A. in American Studies and Sociology from Wellesley College, an M.Ed. from Boston College, and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Illinois Chicago.