Alaina Brenick, Co-chair
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 on the Inclusion, Equity, and Social Justice Committee (SRA) and the Sociocultural Data Tracking Initiative Advisory Board (SRCD), and she was a founding member of the SRCD Antiracism Ally/White Working Group.
Margaret Caughy
Margaret O’Brien Caughy, Sc.D. is the Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Family Health Disparities in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Georgia. Dr. Caughy’s research combines the unique perspectives of developmental science, epidemiology, and public health in studying the contexts of risk and resilience affecting young children. She is particularly interested in race/ethnic disparities in health and development and how these disparities can be understood within the unique ecological niches of ethnic minority families. Dr. Caughy has been the principal investigator of a number of studies focused on how inequities in family and community processes affect the cognitive development, socioemotional functioning, and early academic achievement of young children in diverse race/ethnic groups. Dr. Caughy received a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Texas A&M University, a Masters of Education degree in Human Development from the University of Maryland, and a Doctor of Science degree in Maternal and Child Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
Taylor Hazelbaker
Taylor Hazelbaker, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at The College of St. Scholastica. Her program of research has two principal foci: understanding children’s social identity development and intergroup relations (i.e., on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, and nationality) and examining the influence of proximal (e.g., parent and teacher socialization) and distal (e.g., racism) contexts on children’s understanding of the self and others. Her recent research explores White children’s racial identity development and the development of anti-racism among White children and youth. Taylor has a B.A. in Psychology and Elementary Education from the University of St. Thomas and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Human Development and Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Diane Hughes
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 black and brown 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. In a current project, with funding from the Spencer Foundation, Hughes and her colleagues are developing a public-facing website with resources and tools for school personnel, parents, and students too 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.
Olga Kornienko
Dr. Olga Kornienko is an Assistant Professor of Applied Developmental Psychology at George Mason University. She earned her Ph.D. in Family and Human Development from Arizona State University. Her research examines developmental, cultural, psychological, and biological antecedents and consequences of peer social networks. She is particularly interested in how social network structure and dynamics promote and constrain adolescent and young adult outcomes across multiple domains, including psychological adjustment, ethnic-racial identity development, intergroup peer relationships, and biological processes, which underpin stress, social status, and immunity. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Spencer Foundation. She serves on the editorial boards of Developmental Psychology and Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Isha W. Metzger
Dr. Isha W. Metzger is an Assistant Professor of Clinical-Community Psychology at Georgia State University, Adjunct Clinical Psychology Faculty in the Psychology Department at the University of Georgia, and Visiting Research Faculty at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS’ at Yale University. Dr. Metzger earned her PhD in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina, she completed her Pre-Doctoral Internship at the Medical University of South Carolina, and she received Postdoctoral training both at the National Crime Victims Center and at Yale University. As Director of The EMPOWER Lab, Dr. Metzger focuses on reducing mental health disparities through "Engaging Minorities in Prevention, Outreach, Wellness, Education, & Research.” Dr. Metzger’s federally funded research program is aimed at understanding the role of culturally specific risk (e.g., racial discrimination) and protective (e.g., racial socialization) factors to better inform cognitive-behavioral outcomes for Black and other ethnically minoritized youth. Dr. Metzger is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Owner of Cultural Concepts Consulting, LLC, and a TF-CBT certified trainer who offers award-winning, evidence-based instruction and consultation to students, professionals, and organizations across the nation. From Sierra Leone, West Africa to Atlanta, GA, Dr. Metzger is an advocate to Black youth and families across the diaspora, and she is both personally and professionally committed to illuminating and utilizing cultural strengths to empower diverse youth and families to thrive despite ongoing experiences with interpersonal and racial stressors.
Ursula Moffitt
Ursula Moffitt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Wheaton College Massachusetts. Using critical qualitative and mixed-methods approaches, Dr. Moffitt’s work focuses on three key areas. First, she studies diverse young people’s beliefs and behaviors about race and equity, focusing on how youth make sense of, reiterate, and resist societal inequity as they develop their own racial identities. Second, she turns the gaze on research itself, critically examining the ways in which the terminology, constructs, and methods used in psychological research alternately reinforce or push against systems of oppression. Third, she focuses on the classroom context, studying programs and processes that foster educational contexts critical of hegemonic whiteness and adaptive to the lived realities of all students.
Dr. Moffitt has published in academic journals including Identity, the Journal of Research on Adolescence, Child Development, and the Journal of Adolescent Research. She is a consulting editor at Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology and an editorial board member at Identity. Dr. Moffitt received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Potsdam, Germany, and completed an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University.
Tennisha N. Riley
Tennisha Riley, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Human Development in the Counseling & Educational Psychology department at Indiana University. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Indiana University’s Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society. Tennisha’s research is focused on understanding the emotional development of Black youth by examining (1) how Black youth race-related experiences influence emotion regulation within contexts, such as family, peers, and schools, and (2) processes of emotion regulation that might underly negative health behaviors or prosocial behaviors during adolescence.
Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Co-chair
Dr. Onnie Rogers is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Faculty Fellow with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, where she also directs the DICE lab (Development of Identities in Cultural Environments). A developmental psychologist and identity scholar, Rogers is interested in social and educational inequities and the mechanisms through which macro-level disparities are both perpetuated and disrupted at the micro-level of identities and relationships. Her projects focus on how children and adolescents make sense of their racial, ethnic and gender identities; how cultural stereotypes shape the development and intersectionality of these identities; and the ways in which multiple identities influence adolescents’ social-emotional and academic wellbeing. Rogers was named an “Emerging Scholar” (2018) by Diverse Issues in Higher Education, and a “APS Rising Star” (2017) by the American Psychological Association. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Ford Foundation and she publishes widely. She is as an action editor for Journal of Adolescent Research and serves on editorial boards for Developmental Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, and Qualitative Psychology. Rogers earned her PhD in developmental psychology from New York University and holds a BA in psychology and educational studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Brendesha Tynes
Brendesha Tynes is a professor of education and psychology at the University of Southern California. She is also founding director of the Center for Empowered Learning and Development with Technology. Tynes is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on the racial landscape adolescents navigate in online settings, online racial discrimination, digital literacy and the design of technologies that empower students. Her work examines the impact of online race-related experiences on academic, mental health and behavioral outcomes. She was awarded the Lyle Spencer Award to Transform Education, which allowed her to conduct the National Survey of Critical Digital Literacy, a longitudinal study of the protective function of critical digital literacy skills in the association between traumatic race-related events online and mental health outcomes. Tynes is the recipient of numerous awards including Ford Pre-doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships, the AERA Early Career Award, and the Spencer Foundation Midcareer Award. She is in the 2022 cohort of AERA fellows. Before USC, she was an associate professor of educational psychology and African American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was also a history and global studies teacher in Detroit Public Schools.
Not Listed:
- Jennifer Lansford
- Sabrina Mendez-Escobar
- Stephanie Rowley
- Eleanor Seaton
- Saima K. Hedrick
- Suzanne Le Menestrel
- Roman McNeil