Dr. Brandon Merritt (he/they) examines communication sciences and disorders through a gender equitable lens. The first long-term goal of their research is to understand factors that influence listeners’ attribution of vocal gender for cisgender and transgender persons in English versus Spanish. The second long-term goal is to identify how the gender a listener attributes to a speaker impacts (1) the listener’s evaluation of a speaker’s trustworthiness and communication competence and (2) the listener’s ability to adapt to speech variability. The long-term impacts of this research will be to develop gender affirming voice therapy interventions that are sensitive to linguistic and cultural differences and clarify listener characteristics that facilitate adaptation to novel speakers. They have also created, in conjunction with faculty from Pharmacy, Public Health, Social Work, and Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, a health education program to address health inequity for transgender persons at the U.S./Mexico border.