Shapiro Family Scholarship

PROFILES OF 2025 STUDENT WINNERS

Thanks to the generous support of the Shapiro Charitable Family Foundation, UCLA Disability Studies is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Fall Disability Studies Scholarships.

The Shapiro Family Scholarship  aims to celebrate the strides made by our students, who have been agents of change on this campus and beyond. The winners of the 2025 Shapiro Family Scholarship, Isabel Rubin-Saika and Roxas Haze, will each receive a scholarship award of $3,675. Isabel and Roxas rose to the top of a competitive applicant pool through the connections they drew between disability studies scholarship, their goals, and advocacy efforts. Elijah Bautista is recognized with an Honorable Mention.

Isabel Rubin-Saika

Photo of Isabel Rubin-Saika. Isabel is wearing a white V-neck button-up top and has a large heart-shaped necklace. She has medium-length brown hair. She is smiling at the camera. She is standing in front of green foliage, and there are trees in the background.

Isabel Rubin-Saika is a fourth-year student majoring in Architectural Studies with minors in Disability Studies, Geography, and Urban and Regional Studies. She is passionate about accessible design, inclusive living, and spatial equity that uses innovative design solutions. Isabel was previously an intern for Premiere Living Services, a temp agency for adults with intellectual disabilities that provides inclusive staffing solutions that empower individuals with disabilities to thrive in the workplace. She helped raise awareness for disability diversity in the workplace and did outreach to potential employment partners. Her current research explores the relationship between the experiences of blind / low-vision individuals and practices of accessible design in art museums. She addresses ableist stigma by opening perspectives to life beyond the sighted world. Isabel is currently an Undergraduate Research Fellow for cityLAB UCLA. She intends to continue her education through a Master’s of Architecture program, where she can continue design work through an accessibility lens.

Roxas Haze

Close-up photo of Roxas, a white-skinned nonbinary person with freckles on their face, a triangle purple-jeweled septum ring, and a silver nostril ring. They have blue eyes and a black beanie with medium-length brown hair peering through. They are also wearing a dark blue collared shirt, and are positioned against a white textured wall.

Roxas Haze is a fourth-year Disability Studies major. As a queer, neurodivergent, and disabled person, they are passionate about disability justice, deinstitutionalization, accessibility, and ending cases of abusive conservatorships/guardianships. Roxas is currently a Law Fellow through Loyola Marymount University’s Coelho Law Center for Disability, Law, and Policy. Roxas is also presently a coordinator and signatory for the Disabled Student Union, and serves as the Campus Advisory Board representative on the club’s behalf.  Through the DSU, Roxas advocates for increased accessibility on the UCLA campus for disabled students through Center for Accessible Education and BruinAccess reform and the establishment of the Lily Shaw Disability Cultural Center on campus. They are hoping to obtain a dual degree in Law and a Master’s of Social Welfare, so that they can become a disability rights attorney and therapist for neurodivergent, disabled, and LGBTQ+ individuals.

Honorable Mention – Elijah Bautista

Elijah Bautista, a Filipino-American man with black hair, is pictured wearing a dark blue blazer over a black button-up shirt. He stands smiling at the camera with his hands at his sides. The photo was taken at UCLA’s Royce Hall, where he is positioned beneath a walkway framed by brick and stone arches with pillars along the sides.

Elijah Bautista is a fourth-year Psychology major and Disability Studies minor. He is dedicated to advancing equitable mental health care for underrepresented racial/ethnic groups and neurodivergent individuals, particularly those with ADHD. He previously served as a CDC Lewis Scholar at the UC Davis MIND Institute, where he examined disparities in ADHD identification within the AANHPI community. He is currently a research assistant at the Culture and Race/Ethnicity (CARE) in Youth Mental Health Lab, addressing racial and ethnic disparities in access to care, and the Loo Laboratory, where he researches the effectiveness of trigeminal nerve stimulation, a non-invasive neuromodulation treatment for ADHD. He also interns with 5-Eleven Hoops, a nonprofit dedicated to coaching sports and life skills to neurodivergent individuals. Beyond research, He serves as co-President of All Brains at UCLA, working to build a more inclusive campus for neurodivergent students through mentoring, advocacy, and education. Elijah plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology to uplift these marginalized communities.