Announcing the UW-Madison Outstanding Women of Color Honorees

As a life-long learner and advocate, Patty Cisneros Prevo has always centered her work around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Cisneros Prevo received her BS from Valparaiso University in Education, and as a graduate student-athlete, received an MEd from the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana.

Cisneros Prevo was the Assistant Director of Inclusion & Engagement with Wisconsin Athletics, where she assisted in the development and execution of their DEI Strategic Plan. In her role as the Student Life Manager of Diversity & Inclusion for the Wisconsin School of Business, Cisneros Prevo spearheaded all DEI initiatives in the Undergraduate Program. Now in her new role as UW Health’s Program Manager of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion she will lead DEI efforts with the Department of Medicine and the Carbone Cancer Center.

Cisneros Prevo is currently contracted with Lee & Low Books and will have her first picture book published in Spring 2023. Tenacious: Fifteen Adventures Alongside Disabled Athletes focuses on 15 individuals with physical disabilities and their major life and athletic accomplishments. And in January 2021, Cisneros Prevo was appointed to the Congressional Commission on the State of the U.S. Olympics & Paralympics.

Additionally, Cisneros Prevo has won four National Wheelchair Basketball Association Championships, and became the first female head coach of a collegiate wheelchair basketball team with the University of Illinois, winning the national championship that same year. Three-time Paralympian Cisneros Prevo was a member of the U.S. Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Team for 10 years. As captain of the 2008 Paralympic team, she led Team USA to its second consecutive gold medal after first winning gold in 2004.

Dr. Maichou Lor is an Assistant Professor at the School of Nursing. She received her Bachelors, Masters, and PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was the first Hmong registered nurse to receive a PhD in the United States.

Lor did a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University. Her research is focused on providing both linguistic and cultural access to care for populations with limited English proficiency, with a focus on the Hmong population. She has led multiple interdisciplinary research teams in the areas of patient-provider communication (e.g., pain communication), hearing screening, mental health, and medical interpreting.

Among the many milestones Lor and her teams have accomplished, one most notable milestone is the development of the first Hmong word recognition test for the Hmong community. This test is one of the basic components of hearing evaluations. With a Hmong word recognition test, it will allow for Hmong-speaking patients to get an accurate diagnosis of the type of hearing loss they may have and receive appropriate hearing care and treatments.

Lor has published more than 40 articles and presented 60 scholarly research presentations at local, regional, national, and international conferences on issues related to poor access to care and health disparities due to culture and language differences from the mainstream as well as solutions to improving engagement of underrepresented communities in health research. She has been invited to speak locally and nationally on topics related to recruitment and retention of minority nursing students and Hmong health for student organizations, professional organizations, and the Hmong community.

Lor enjoys teaching about social justice and health equity. One of her favorite classes to teach is Nursing 105: Culturally Congruent Health Care Practice, a course that helps students to critically reflect on their socially constructed identities and the impact these identities have on patient care and health care systems.

Spring Sherrod has led the UW–Madison Department of English as Department Manager since 2004. Spring holds a Master of Science in Education from the University of Wisconsin. In her position, she brings leadership to a large and academically diverse department with a staff of 40+ faculty, 40+ academic staff, 120+ graduate student employees, about 10 administrative staff, and annual expenditures of more than $10 million. Spring advises the chair and the department in matters of administrative management, budgeting and financial management, human resources, and information technology management. She also supervises a staff of seven.

In 2018, Sherrod was one of the university members who visibly and determinedly pushed for renaming two Union facilities that bore the name of men who belonged to a UW–Madison campus group operating under the name Ku Klux Klan. Sherrod has also pushed the department to make concrete investments to support undergraduate and graduate students of color. She ensured that students entering the English PhD via a bridge from the African American Studies MA would receive the same level of funding as their peers earning an MA in English.

Dr. Young is the Peter A. Duehr Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences (DOVS) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW). She has secondary appointments in the Departments of Pediatrics and Medical Genetics at UW, and adjunct appointments at the Duke University Department of Ophthalmology and the Singapore Eye Research Institute.

Young is a pediatric and adult strabismus ophthalmologist, and clinician-scientist. Her clinical and research expertise is in ophthalmic genetics and genomics — especially in the areas of refractive error, ocular development, and childhood glaucoma. She has directed an active research laboratory in gene hunting of ophthalmic diseases for nearly 25 years.

Young currently serves on the Board of the Wisconsin Council of the Blind and Visually Disabled. She is the first sighted person ever in their history to be invited to become a board member. Her work with the Council began when she established the Department’s Patient Centered Care Committee chaired by Melanie Schmitt, MD. This committee collaboratively works with the Council’s leadership to better serve the visually impaired community. It was through this work that Young established the department’s Low Vision and Rehabilitation Program. This program includes a comprehensive team of professionals dedicated to enhancing remaining vision after a medical or traumatic incident as well as accepting and adapting to one’s vision loss.

Young was recently inducted as a Sister into the Madison Metropolitan Chapter of The Links, Incorporated. The Links is one of the oldest and largest predominantly African American not-for-profit service organizations dedicated to supporting education, scholarship, health, and economics of the African American Community. Young was recently elected to the 2022 Board of Trustees for ARVO (Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology) has served as the chair of the Women in Eye and Vision Research (WEAVR) committee and has been a mentor to many from across the world.