Meet the Organizers

About the Co-Organizers

Dr. Vonnie C. McLoyd's  research investigates the role of parental behavior and family relations. As paths through which economic conditions such as poverty, parental job loss, and parental work characteristics exert their influence on youth’s socioemotional adjustment. As processes that protect youth from, or increase youth’s vulnerability to, the effects of experiences in peer and neighborhood contexts known to compromise socioemotional adjustment (e.g., neighborhood violence, peer victimization, racial discrimination). A second interest centers on the predictors and correlates of adolescent employment and the paths through which race, social class, and experiences during adolescence shape the transition to adulthood. Her My work draws from economic theories of the family emphasizing resource investment and from family stress models emphasizing the implications of parents’ psychological well-being for parenting behavior and youth socioemotional development. 

Andrew J. Fuligni, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and the Department of Psychology at UCLA. He also is a Senior Scientist in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. His research focuses on the interaction between sociocultural experiences and biobehavioral development among diverse adolescents, with a current focus on youth's prosocial behavior, contributions to their social worlds, and sleep. As the Co-Director of the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent, he works to translate and disseminate the science of adolescence to policy-makers and practitioners to support efforts that promote the health development of diverse youth. Receiving his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan, he was a recipient of the American Psychological Association's Boyd McCandless Award for Early Career Contribution to Developmental Psychology, a William T. Grant Faculty Scholars Award, a FIRST award from NICHD, and he is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. 

Diane Hughes is Professor of Applied Psychology within the Steinhardt School at New York University. Dr. Hughes has written extensively about the role that race and ethnicity play in the lives of adolescents and their families. Topics that she studies include experienced discrimination, racial stereotypes, racial socialization, and ethnic identity across ethnically and racially diverse samples of adolescents as well as factors that shape academic engagement and achievement. Currently, she and her students have several projects focused on youths' representations of structural inequalities and on teachers' and students' experiences with racism in schools. With funding from the Spencer Foundation, we developed a public-facing website with resources and tools for school personnel, parents, and students to promote anti-racist, equitable, and inclusive schools. Hughes also conducts local and national workshops for parents and community members on having conversations about race with children. Hughes received her B.A. in psychology and African American studies from Williams College and her Ph.D. in community and developmental psychology from the University of Michigan. She is former chair of the MacArthur Midlife Network’s subcommittee on Ethnic Diversity in Urban Contexts and former Chair of the Cross-university Study Group on Race, Culture, and Ethnicity. Her research has been funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, and the Spencer Foundation.