Biography
Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, Ed.D., LPC, MCHES, NCC
Dr. Claudia is a Columbia- and Yale-trained youth mental health and substance use prevention expert with experience in public schools, clinical settings, and research institutions. In the first decade of her career, she served as a public school teacher, bilingual school counselor in New York City, and part of the founding leadership team at Bard High School Early College Newark where she developed and oversaw student-centered policies, programs, and structures. She then transitioned to the next decade of her career in academia where she began as a project director at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and led the earlier stage of development for the inspirED Online Resource Center. Recognizing the impact and reach of evidence-informed, digital approaches to improve mental health and well-being in youth, she completed her postdoctoral studies in the design and evaluation of digital interventions at the Yale School of Medicine. She was later promoted to assistant professor of Medicine (General Medicine) at the Yale School of Medicine and earned the prestigious Yale Center for Clinical Investigation Scholar Award, a career development award from NIH/NCATS to lead her team in the design and evaluation of a digital game to prevent suicide among youth who misuse substances, including opioids. During this time, she was an invited Guest Editor of the October 2023 Supplemental Issue in Prevention Science Journal to highlight the coordinated effort of 10 research projects across the nation in preventing opioid misuse among youth and young adults. Throughout her career, she continues to apply a public health approach to reach more young people and to improve youth mental health and well-being outcomes in schools and communities.
Currently, Dr. Claudia is the Vice President of Research and Evaluation at Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation and an assistant clinical professor in the Child Study Center as well as an assistant professor adjunct in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science at the Yale School of Medicine. She continues to apply a public health approach in her role and use research to inform programs, resources, and federal-, state-, and local-level policies. She is a 2024-2025 Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with the Yale Women Faculty Forum. Dr. Claudia received her doctorate from Columbia University, her master’s degree from New York University, and her bachelor’s degree from Villanova University. When she is not geeking out about science or working with clients, she enjoys finding creative ways to cook with seasonal vegetables from her local farm.
