Kurt C. Organista, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies Latino psychosocial and health problems. He teaches courses on race, ethnic relations & social welfare, as well as social work practice with Latino populations. He conducts research on HIV prevention with Latino migrant laborers and is editor of the book HIV Prevention with Latinos: Theory, research and practice, published in 2012 by Oxford University Press, and author of Solving Latino Psychosocial and Health Problems: Theory, Research, & Practice (2nd ed.), published by Oxford University Press in 2023. He serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Community Psychology, the Hispanic Journal of the Behavioral Sciences, and the Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Social Work. From 2004-2008 Organista was appointed to the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health, and from 2010 to 2015 he was Principal Investigator of a federal R01 grant from the NIAAA to develop and test a structural environmental model of alcohol-related HIV risk in Latino migrant day laborers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Organista served as trustee of the Latino Community Foundation (2015 to 2022) and as trustee and Vice Chair of the San Francisco Community Foundation (2008 to 2018). In 2018, he received the Leon Henkin Citation for Excellence in Mentoring Underrepresented Students, and in 2020 he was named the American Cultures Teacher of the Year. In 2020, Organista was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and in 2021 he was awarded the Harry and Riva Specht Endowed Chair in Publicly Supported Social Services.
Professor Organista is Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. A long-time faculty affiliate of the Institute, he previously served as chair of the Center for Latino Policy Research (now known as the Latinx Research Center) from 2001 to 2003 and as Interim Chair of ISSI's Latinx Research Center during 2024-25.
