Meet the Organizers

Nancy E. Hill, Ph.D. is The Charles Bigelow Professor of Education at Harvard University and a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on parenting and adolescent development. She is the author of the recently published a book, The End of Adolescence: The Lost Art of Delaying Adulthood, Harvard University Press, 2021, which focuses on the experiences and mindsets youth need as they transition from adolescence into adulthood. Professor Hill’s program of research focuses on understanding how demographic background impact youths’ opportunities for upward mobility, especially through secondary school and postsecondary transitions. Second, her research focuses on the relational supports and mechanisms associated with adolescents’ emerging sense of purpose and views of the economy as they influence post-secondary transitions to college and career. Professor Hill is President of SRCD.

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD is a Professor of Education, Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California and Director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE). She studies the psychological and neurobiological development of emotion and self-awareness, and connections to social, cognitive and moral development in educational settings. She uses cross-cultural, interdisciplinary studies of narratives and feelings to uncover experience-dependent neural mechanisms contributing to identity, intrinsic motivation, deep learning, and generative, creative and abstract thought. Her work has a special focus on adolescents from low-SES communities, and she involves youths from these communities as junior scientists in her work. A former urban public junior high-school science teacher, she earned her doctorate at Harvard University.

Shauna M. Cooper, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Faculty Fellow at the Center for Faculty Excellence, and RTI Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2022, Dr. Cooper will begin a 2-year appointment at the Urban Institute (Washington, DC), as a Health Equity Fellow. Her research spans several areas of expertise, including the racial and cultural context of parenting among Black families, father involvement and engagement, racial discrimination and adolescent well-being, girls’ health and development, and the individual and interactive influences of family, school, and community contexts. Dr. Cooper also is committed to culturally responsive methods and evidence-based programming as well as engaging communities through the development of partnerships and collaborations.