SRCD Implementation Task Force

Mona Abo-Zena is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. On individual, social, and structural levels, she integrates research, theory, and practice to support the development of children and families with diverse experiences and backgrounds, and those who support them. Her equity focused scholarship considers religious and spiritual experiences from an intersectional perspective. She balances an asset-based perspective of diverse (i.e., all) children, families, and communities while acknowledging contextual challenges and resources. Her work is informed by teaching and administrative work in P-16 educational and community-based contexts. She serves as the co-chair of the Ethnic-Racial and Issues committee of the Society for Research in Child Development, a Steering Committee member of the Society for Study of Human Development, and a Board Member of the Religion and Education Special Interest Group of the American Education Research Association.

Margarita Azmitia, a professor of Psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, immigrated from Guatemala to attend college in North Carolina. She completed her Ph.D. at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the roles of family, peers, their intersectional identities, and educational aspirations in minoritized adolescents and emerging adults' school and developmental transitions.  Much of her current work focuses on First Generation College Students' transition to and through college and into work. She co-chaired the APA task force on tenure and promotion of ethnic/racial minoritized faculty in psychology and, in 2023, mentored young scholars through SRCD and SSEA's mentoring programs. She is proud of her current and former doctoral students' commitment to social justice in the academy and their numerous contributions to developmental psychology and education. She is also grateful for the opportunity to mother her daughters, two amazing young adults.

Alaina Brenick (she/her) is a white, queer, disabled, Jewish, ciswoman scholar-activist. She is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut. She received a pre-doctoral traineeship from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to obtain her Ph.D. (University of Maryland) prior to her postdoctoral fellowship at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany. Through a social justice lens, she analyzes how diverse social groups—sometimes with vastly different societal structures, norms, and expectations—experience, reason about, and respond to intergroup relations, group-based victimization, and systemic discrimination. Using a social-ecological framework to analyze micro and macro system influences on these factors, her work is designed to be applied directly to policy, practice, and social action. Her research provides a fundamental knowledge base for creating multifaceted, contextually, and developmentally appropriate intervention programs designed to promote compassion, empathy, positive intergroup relations, and social equity. Dr. Brenick prioritizes service that drives anti-bias, diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice in the field. Presently, she serves as co-chair for the Inclusion, Equity, and Social Justice Committee (SRA) and the Sociocultural Data Tracking Initiative Advisory Board (SRCD); additionally, she was co-chair of the SRCD Anti-Racism Task Force and a founding member of the SRCD Antiracism Ally/White Working Group.  

Michelle Brown, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of South Carolina in the Clinical-Community Ph.D. Program. She earned her Ph.D. in Child Psychology from the University of Minnesota with an emphasis in Developmental Psychopathology and Clinical Science and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Child Abuse Pediatrics at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. Her research uses a developmental psychopathology framework to understand how interpersonal relationships (e.g., friendships) influence victimized children’s risk for developing adverse socioemotional outcomes and elucidate biopsychosocial factors that influence treatment outcomes for victimized children. Within SRCD, she is the Student and Early Career Council (SECC) representative to Governing Council (GC), SECC Co-Chair, GC representative to the Equity and Justice Committee, and a Black Caucus member. She was a 2017 Millennium Scholar, mentor in the 2021 Towards 2044: Horowitz Early Career Scholars Program cohort, and a 2021 Small Grants Program for Early Career Scholars awardee.

Lisa J. Crockett, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Crockett has published widely on several topics related to adolescence and early adulthood, ranging from pubertal development to cultural processes that affect youth development and well-being. Her primary research interests relate to individual (pubertal development, self-regulation), contextual (parenting, peer relations, stress), and cultural factors contributing to adolescent risk behavior and psychological adjustment. Focal themes in her work are adolescent risk behavior, cultural differences in parenting, and risk and protective factors influencing Latino/a youth adjustment. Related to these themes, she has examined predictors of adolescent and young adult internalizing and externalizing behaviors, focusing on the roles of self-regulation and stress; ethnic differences in parenting and its relation to youth risk behaviors across multiple ethnic groups; and contextual variables that contribute to psychosocial adjustment among Latino/a youth, as well as cultural factors that support healthy development and resilience. Dr Crockett’s work has been funded by several national institutes (NICHD, NIMH, NIMHD, and NIAAA) and by NSF. She has served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Research on Adolescence and as President of the Society for Research on Adolescence. Recent books include Rural ethnic minority youth in the United States: Theory, research and applications (2016); and the APA handbook of adolescent and young adult development (2023).

Melinda Gonzales-Backen, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at Florida State University. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Arizona and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Family and Human Development at Arizona State University. Her research program focuses on ethnic-racial identity and other cultural and developmental processes among Latinx youth. Specifically, Dr. Gonzales-Backen is interested in examining how the intersections of adolescent development, cultural processes, family context, and minority stressors inform adolescent adjustment in the areas of psychosocial well-being and health outcomes. Her current projects include quantitative studies of (1) cultural and familial processes among Latinx youth in rural areas and (2) academic achievement and belonging among Latinx college students. She is a member of the SRCD Latinx Caucus and is a founding member of the inaugural steering committee of the SRCD Indigenous Caucus.

Tamara Halle, Ph.D., is a developmental scientist and a Senior Research Scholar in Early Childhood Research at Child Trends. She has over 25 years of experience conducting research and evaluation studies on children’s early development; early care and education settings; and early childhood policies at the national and state levels. She is known both nationally and internationally as an expert on early childhood development, the early childhood workforce, and implementation science. Publications include scholarly articles on school readiness (e.g., Halle et al., 2014), reports on the ECE workforce (e.g., Paschall, Madill, & Halle, 2020), and books and chapters on applying implementation science in the early childhood field (e.g., Halle, 2020). She directs several large, multi-year projects for the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She also served for six years as an Advisor to the Foundation for Child Development’s Young Scholars Program.

Lionel C. Howard, Ed.D., is an Academic Dean and Associate Professor, Educational Research, in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the George Washington University. Dr. Howard is an applied developmental psychologist and research methodologist who conducts community- and school-based research. Dr. Howard’s research has been funded by NIH, NSF and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and published widely in numerous top-tier journals. He is the co-editor of Facing Racism in Education (3rd Ed), published by Harvard University Press, and has served as a consultant on education policy and evaluation studies. Dr. Howard has served on the Executive Committee of the SRCD Black Caucus (Treasurer) and co-chaired the Ethnic and Racial Issues Committee. Dr. Howard received his Ed.D. in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University, Graduate School of Education, and completed a National Institute of Child Health and Development postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Department of Psychology and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. He also has a M.A. in Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation from the University of Maryland, College Park, and B.A. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from William Paterson University of New Jersey. Dr. Howard is the Founder/President of LCH Research & Evaluation, LLC.

Jennifer E. Lansford, Ph.D. is the S. Malcolm Gillis Distinguished Research Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University, as well as President-Elect of SRCD. She earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2000 and has been a member of SRCD since 1995. Notable prior contributions to SRCD include serving on the International Affairs Committee from 2011 to 2017 (co-chair from 2015 to 2017) and serving on the Program Committee from 2015 to 2021 (Program Co-Chair for the 2019 biennial meeting in Baltimore). She also has served in numerous previous national and international leadership roles, such as chairing the U.S. National Committee for Psychological Science of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and chairing the U.S. NIH Psychosocial Development, Risk and Prevention Study Section. Her research focuses on parenting and child development in diverse cultural contexts.

Sabrina A. Mendez-Escobar, Ph.D. (she/ella) is a tenured Assistant Professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, Harry S. Truman College in the department of Education and Human Development and Family Studies. As a community college professor, and product of community college education, she values offering accessible and affordable education that is rigorous and welcoming to all students. In her research, she has explored the ethnic-racial socialization practices of Dominican mothers using a sociohistorical context. Growing up in a diverse Latinx community, and later occupying professional and academic spaces where she is often the only person of color, contributed to Dr. Mendez-Escobar’s interest in the value of ethnicity and race on development. Her interests have also been influenced by her background as an infant mental health counselor where she focused on supporting early relationships and how they serve as a protective factor for child development.

Jacqueline Nguyen, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Cognitive and Developmental Sciences and chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She directs the Cultures & Contexts Research Group, in which her team examines sociocultural factors that influence adolescent and emerging adult development, with a focus on the ways changes such as immigration impact cultural identity development, parent-peer-and-child relationships, and how individuals seek a sense of belonging as they adapt to changes in their environment (e.g., minoritized youth transitions to college). She is a current member of the SRCD Ethnic and Racial Issues committee and the SRCD Asian Caucus, with which previously served on the outreach & communications subcommittee and the 2021 biennial meeting planning committee.

Vaishali Raval, Ph.D. is professor of psychology and affiliate of global and intercultural studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She received a Ph.D. in clinical developmental psychology from University of Windsor and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cultural psychology and human development at the University of Chicago. Through her research, teaching, and service, she is committed to addressing the historic underrepresentation of global communities in developmental science. Her primary program of research focuses on cultural and contextual foundations of parenting, emotion processes, and how they relate to child and adolescent mental health outcomes. She has worked to promote global developmental science through roles as the co-chair of SRCD’s international affairs committee, past chair of SRA’s international committee, and chair the US National Committee for Psychological Science (USNC/IUPsyS), as well as through associate editor roles for Journal of Research on Adolescence and Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Peipei Setoh, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dr. Setoh holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she researched cognitive development in infants and young children. Dr. Setoh is the director of the Early Cognition Lab at Nanyang Technological University, and she leads the Social Science team in Singapore’s largest birth cohort study, Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes, GUSTO. Her current research focuses on how family and parenting influences children’s outcomes. She examines how experiences with parents (e.g., warmth, harshness, parenting by lying) affect children’s development (e.g., academic achievement, socioemotional adjustment, filial care).

Christia Spears Brown, Ph.D., is a Professor of Developmental Psychology and Associate Dean of Inclusive Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky. She earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on children’s understanding of discrimination, the development of stereotypes and group identity, and the impact of discrimination and stereotypes on academic outcomes. As an intergroup researcher, her work spans gender and gender identity, ethnicity, immigration status, and economic inequality. In addition to peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, she has written three books, one for an academic audience, Discrimination in Childhood and Adolescence, and two for general audiences, Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue and Unraveling Bias, and co-edited the Wiley Handbook of Group Processes in Children and Adolescents. She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science; has been the Scholar-in-Residence for SRCD; and is an Associate Editor for British Journal of Developmental Psychology. She is currently a member of the Governing Council for SRCD and President-Elect of Society for Study of Human Development. Her research has been funded by the Foundation for Child Development and the National Science Foundation.

Joanna Williams, Ph.D., is Senior Director of Research at Search Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes positive youth development and advances equity through applied research and collaborative partnerships with youth-serving organizations. She has served as a tenured faculty member at University of Virginia and Rutgers University, where she cultivated her research skills with a focus on issues of racial equity and positive youth development. She was a recipient of a William T. Grant Scholars Award and is past-Chair of the SRCD Black Caucus. Dr. Williams is committed to co-producing actionable research for practitioners, policymakers, families, and communities. She is a member of the National Scientific Council on Adolescence and of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine's Board on Children, Youth, and Families. She is also an affiliate of Youth-Nex: The UVA Center to Promote Effective Youth Development and of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication.