Jasmine D. Graves, MPH

Jasmine D. Graves (she/her) is a public health researcher and social impact strategist committed to dismantling systems of oppression and rebuilding a world where Black, Indigenous, and People of Color thrive. A natural problem solver, Jasmine drove public policy for nearly ten years as a former Senior Policy Advisor to New York City’s Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, Advisor to two New York City Health Commissioners, and Qualitative Researcher on Rikers Island. During her tenure at the New York City Mayor’s Office, she served as a leader in the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She leveraged her oversight of an $80 million behavioral health and correctional health portfolio to shift City policies and practices at the intersection of mental illness, substance use, and houselessness from criminalization to humanization. Jasmine is currently pursuing a PhD in Population Health Sciences as a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. In between classes, she serves as the Founder and Principal Strategist at Radical Imagination Strategies, LLC, a New York City -based consulting firm that provides strategic public health planning, research and policy support to social justice focused organizations and institutions across the United States. Jasmine’s work focuses on the health impacts of structural racism via documenting the harms of carceral systems. Her firm is currently engaged in efforts to radically imagine community driven systems of safety. Ms. Graves received her BA in World Arts and Cultures from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and her MPH from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.