Olivia Helfrich-Tapia

Olivia Helfrich-Tapia is a Clinical Research Student at the Response To Risk Program.

Olivia Helfrich-Tapia is a Clinical Research Assistant and a School and Work Coach at the Response to Risk program. Joining the 2B-EPIC internship program in mid June, she is involved with school/work coaching, where she meets with clients who are CHR in order to help them with any life skills they need support with. She is on the Spanish Advisory Board where she meets with the rest of the team to lead meetings with Spanish-speaking clinicians about how to increase access to Spanish services in psychosis intervention. In her own scholarly project she focuses on income as a determining factor in undocumented immigrants’ CHRp. She also spends time with the high school students postering around the community to spread awareness about our studies. 

Academics: Olivia is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in both psychology and Spanish while minoring in Latino Studies at Williams College. 

Interests and Experience: Prior to joining the Response to Risk research program, Olivia began working with Dr. Eliza Congdon in a developmental psychology lab at Williams focusing on gesture and math learning in young children. There, she helps with thesis projects by analyzing data, coding, and helping to run studies. Her biggest project there so far has been setting up and running a month-long study where she filmed 20 college students repeating simple sentences with varying gestures in order to study how children will group the college students together based on gestures. In the future, Olivia hopes to pursue projects aiming to increase access to mental health resources to marginalized communities. She is especially interested in offering services in Spanish to immigrants and working within the asylum-seeking system. Outside of 2B-EPIC, Olivia volunteers at a dog rescue (Last Hope K9 Rescue) and loves spending time in her garden.