Ana's research and professional practice focuses on environmental and climate justice. She works directly with impacted communities and coalitions to support the advancement of community led alternatives to achieve environmental justice. Ana works on a range of related issues including environmental justice policies, climate justice and renewable energy policies, land use and zoning tools for environmental justice, zero waste systems, cumulative impacts, and mitigation strategies tied to goods movement. Ana's professional practice is based primarily in community engaged scholarship and critical participatory action research. Her ongoing work with environmental justice activists in Newark, New Jersey was featured in the documentary film, Sacrifice Zones. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the implementation of state-level environmental justice policies across the United States. 

Her current professional practice focuses on supporting the capacity of the Environmental Justice movement in the US to lead radical, disruptive strategies for climate justice and just transitions. She served as the Co-PI on a national landscape assessment of the environmental justice movement, Environmental Justice Movement: Priorities, Strategies and Just Transitions. This assessment serves as the basis for launching a national Environmental Justice Movement Fellowship program housed at the Tishman Environment and Design Center and co-led by Professor Sujatha Jesudason.  Ana also led a research team at the Tishman Center in partnership with the Building Equity and Alignment for Impact to explore the misalignment of funding and priorities between environmental grantmakers and grassroots environmental justice organizations in the Midwest and Gulf South regions of the country. The report, Environmental Justice and Philanthropy: Challenges and Opportunities for Alignment, revealed that only a small fraction (1%) of environmental grants are directed to environmental justice organizations in the two regions.