Erika Abbott graduated from Boise State University in 2018 with a BS in Social Science and minors in Nonprofit Management and Labor Studies. Erika now attends Cornell University as a Ph.D. graduate student in Sociology, with support from the Policy Analysis and Management Department. Cornell awarded Erika with the Dean’s Excellence Fellowship, a competitive fellowship that recognizes incoming students with strong academic and personal accomplishments. Through IMSRL at Boise State, her research focused on the cultural barriers faced by women with children as they pursue their undergraduate degrees. She plans to continue a similar path during her graduate studies, focusing on the barriers that women with children face when obtaining and maintaining employment, and how current policy may contribute to those barriers.