Gajathree (Gaja) Ananthathurai came into her Master of Social Work program with an interest in being involved in making systemic change and taking action against the social injustices she was seeing in the world around her. However, she was still trying to figure out what was the best route to do that and how she wanted to engage in making the changes she was hoping to see. She was involved in research during her undergraduate degree, namely in mental health and linguistic research, but it wasn't until she took policy and research classes in her social work program that she was able to more clearly make the link on how research informs practice. Gaja found herself soon drawn to social work research as a means of producing the data and reports necessary to provide a strong foundation/knowledge base to inform the advocacy work she was passionate about. Issues that she hopes to positively impact through research include reproductive justice, abortion information and care, gender-based violence, and complex mental health and these intersections with youth, gender-diverse, neurodiverse, racialized, and newcomer populations.