Zion Mengesha

Zion Mengesha is a PhD candidate in Linguistics. Advised by Rob Podesva and Penny Eckert, her dissertation explores the components of respectability politics African American women identify with, and how language variation and change relate to the construction of respectability. She is a sociolinguistics subject matter expert at Google Research, where she is helping the team run foundational research to understand racial disparities in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to ensure voice-AI systems are more inclusive. Zion graduated from UC Davis where she received the Chancellor's Award for her research on linguistic discrimination toward AAVE in California schools.