UC Berkeley LEAP Research Fellow Describes Experience at SisterWeb

By Valerie Pimentel, UC Berkeley LEAP Research Fellow | April 2025

I began my internship with SisterWeb very excited to grow my knowledge in public health and its implications in maternal health. Throughout my time there, I even had the privilege to extend teachings from my classes to projects on the field. The two most exciting projects that I took part in were creating a social media toolkit and identifying media and peer-reviewed articles to post on SisterWeb’s social media accounts. In addition, I was able to learn extensively about SisterWeb’s collaboration with many other organizations that support Black and Brown birthing individuals, and how they work together to reach the community. I was also able to interact with analytics of all social media platforms and help determine where we would put efforts based on interaction and what type of posts were the most efficient. Through these experiences, I was able to understand how news should be highlighted across the organization’s social media channels or how to create a communications toolkit for others who are seeking to disseminate publications. I was given the opportunity to learn how to produce content that considered factors that would determine how SisterWeb’s audience would engage with information presented within a professional environment. 

I had experience making social media posts for the advertisement of events but I was excited to extend my outreach to review news articles and help distribute them to SisterWeb’s audience. I reviewed recently published news articles each morning and was responsible for identifying which ones were relevant to share on social media pages. Once I summarized an article, I would send it to my supervisor, Sofía Carbone (SisterWeb’s Communications Manager) to approve and post. This helped me build my skills in creating information that is both accessible and informative for SisterWeb’s audience.  I was very thankful to have this opportunity as it can be translated into future career opportunities and the world heavily using social media and technology.

Creating a social media toolkit was also a great project that I was very excited to take part in. I had never created a toolkit prior to SisterWeb, which added to my concern regarding how I would even start, however, I appreciated how I was able to ask Sofia any questions and how I had the freedom to structure it and review prior examples. The toolkit was focused on disseminating a recent publication about the Champion Dyad Initiative (CDI). When I was learning about the CDI, I was inspired by its potential to improve relationships between health professionals and Black and Brown patients. While there were many aspects of the CDI described in the paper, we needed to make sure that we could share it in a manner that was succinct and accessible for all audiences which meant dissecting the study and taking the information that captivated its main goals and structure. This allowed me to ensure that I can extend my communication skills and create projects that could make information more accessible to the public. I also became more comfortable with using a friendly and more casual tone in social media which is critical now to reach and engage a larger audience.

Overall, I was very fortunate to have this rewarding experience and to continue to build my skills as a public health professional. Above all, I hope my work was useful for the audience members who identify as Black and Brown pregnant individuals. I will take all that I have learned with Sister Web with any future projects and hope to continue to break these barriers to accessible and reliable healthcare information.