Nicol Valdez is a National Poverty Fellow in residence at the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) during the 2019–2021 academic years and is mentored by IRP Affiliate Jenna Nobles. Valdez received her Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University. Her primary research focus centers around American stratification, immigration, and poverty with an emphasis on undocumented status. Her dissertation research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, sets out to understand what it means to be a Mexican-American family, documented and undocumented, living in New York and North Carolina. Her work at OPRE focuses on projects related to underrepresented groups’ access to social services, while also working with the Office of Refugee Resettlement on their annual survey and research methods for data collection.