Helena's professional experience has sought social impact through roles at the United Nations Population Fund, Civic Consulting Alliance, and The Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research and Science (CORNERS).

Most recently, she led the evaluations of Communities Partnering 4 Peace (CP4P) and the Metropolitan Peace Academy (MPA), utilizing a mixed-methods, community-engaged approach to examine the programs’ impact on outcomes related to community violence, participant education and employment, and employee wellbeing and career trajectory. She is a proud member of the MPA’s Cohort 18, having attended the 144-hour training in full as part of her evaluation activities. 

She studied Statistics and specialized in Public Policy Analysis at the University of Chicago. In her free time, she enjoys listening to copious podcasts while retaining limited information from them, playing recreational sports mediocrely but with great passion, and learning instruments well enough to perform for her hearing-impaired elderly dog.