Leadership
Director
Teresa Eckrich Sommer is a Research Professor at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University. Sommer designs and builds research-practice partnerships to study pressing issues in education and social policy. Her main area of focus is the dual development of children and parents and the economic mobility of families. She is a leading scholar in the two-generation field and recent research projects include: (a) the long-term effects of education and career training for parents of young children enrolled in Head Start on parent and youth outcomes, (b) the implementation of the first-ever college promise scholarship program for youth and one of their parents, (c) the impact of combining ESL services for parents with Head Start services for children on outcomes for immigrant families, and (d) the design and study of strategies to promote identity, belonging, and leadership among parenting students and their children on college campuses.
Sommer began her career at the New York City Department of Juvenile Justice following a Coro Foundation Fellowship in Public Affairs. Both experiences solidified her life-long commitment to advancing social policy and practice in the U.S. She received her master’s and doctorate in public policy from Harvard University. Sommer currently directs the Northwestern University Two-Generation Research Initiative (NU2Gen), which she co-founded.
t-sommer@northwestern.edu; T. Sommer CV
Co-Director
Lauren A. Tighe is a Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University. She is interested in the role of families in the development and academic success of children and youth. Within the NU2Gen team, she has led numerous two-generation projects including: (a) the effects of an English as a Second Language program on immigrant families using mixed methods, (b) descriptive analysis of the differences in postsecondary outcomes before and after the implementation of a novel college promise program, and (c) the experimental outcomes of a community-based workforce and education training program for parents. She is an expert in secondary data analysis with large datasets and will lead a new project exploring the role of childcare in the success of parent participants in the HPOG 2.0 program (ACF).
Tighe is a four-time University of Michigan alumna and received her PhD in Developmental Psychology and Social Work in 2019. Prior to graduate school, she was a high school math teacher in Detroit.
lauren.tighe@northwestern.edu
Research Partners
Terri Sabol is an Assistant Professor in Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on the individual and environmental factors that lead to healthy child development, with a particular emphasis on schools and families. She applies developmental theory, psychological measurement and advanced quantitative methods to pressing social policy issues that affect low-income children and families. In particular, she focuses on two key policy areas: (1) improving early childhood education; and (2) increasing families’ human capital, including parent education, employment, and income. The broad goal of her research is to generate dynamic theories of change, measure complex social processes, and analyze data with advanced statistical techniques to produce innovative, functional scholarship aimed at improving the lives of children living with economic hardship.
terri.sabol@northwestern.edu; T. Sabol CV
Mesmin Destin is a social psychologist and studies how socioeconomic circumstances influence individual thoughts, identities, and behaviors. Building upon theories of identity and motivation, his research investigates social and psychological factors that contribute to disparities in educational outcomes from middle school through early adulthood. He employs a combination of secondary data analysis, laboratory experiments, and field experiments to uncover effective strategies and supports that guide young people’s perceptions of self, society, and opportunities as they navigate inequality and pursue goals. He is an Associate Professor in Psychology and Human Development and Social Policy, and the Northwestern Faculty Director of Student Access and Enrichment.
m-destin@northwestern.edu
Onnie Rogers is a developmental psychologist and identity scholar whose research curiosities converge at the intersection of human development, diversity and equity, and education. Dr. 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 research centers on the perspectives and experiences of racially/ethnically diverse children and adolescents. As a professor and a researcher, Dr. Rogers advocates for equity with an intersectional lens and does research on race and gender, and their role in identity development among youth in urban contexts.
onnie.rogers@northwestern.edu
P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale is an expert on the interface between research and social policy for children and families, a former American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)/Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Congressional Science Fellow, and the first developmental psychologist to be tenured in a public policy school in the United States. She is the Vice Provost for Academics at Northwestern University, as well as the Frances Willard Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at the School of Education and Social Policy. She specializes in multidisciplinary research on social issues and how they affect families and the development of children and youth. Much of her work addresses family and program strengths that lead to children’s positive social and educational outcomes in the context of economic hardship. Specific topics include two-generation human capital interventions for young parents and children, early childhood education, postsecondary education and training for low-income young adults, family well-being, parent-child relationships, welfare reform, immigration, and social disparities in health.
lcl@northwestern.edu; P.L. Chase-Lansdale_CV
Elise Chor is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Temple University, and former postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research. She draws on economic and developmental perspectives to consider the interaction between families, government, and the early childhood education market. Her research explores the impacts of universal and targeted public preschool programs on childcare quality, parents’ childcare and employment decision making, family processes, and ultimately child development, with a focus on low-income families.
elise.chor@temple.edu
Consultants
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D. is the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development at Columbia University’s Teachers College and Professor of Pediatrics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. She directs the National Center for Children and Families (which focuses on policy research on children and families) at the University. A life span developmental psychologist, she is interested in how lives unfold over time and factors that contribute to well-being across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. She conducts long run studies beginning when mothers are pregnant or have just given birth of a child (sometimes following these families for thirty years). Other studies follow families in different types of neighborhoods and housing. In addition, she designs and evaluates intervention programs for children and parents (home visiting programs for pregnant women or new parents, early childhood education programs for toddlers and preschoolers, two generation programs for young children and their parents, and after school programs for older children). She is the author of several books including Adolescent mothers in later life; Consequences of Growing up Poor; Neighborhood Poverty: Context and consequences for children. She has been elected into both the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Education, and she has received life-time achievement awards from the Society for Research in Child Development, American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association and Society for Research on Adolescence. She holds an honorary doctorate from Northwestern University and the distinguished alumni award from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
Hirokazu Yoshikawa is the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at NYU Steinhardt and a University Professor at NYU. He co-directs the NYU Global TIES for Children Center within the Institute of Human Development and Social Change. He is a community and developmental psychologist who studies the effects of public policies and programs related to immigration, early childhood, and poverty reduction on children’s development. He conducts research in the United States and in low- and middle-income countries. His recent books include Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality(with Ajay Chaudry, Taryn Morrissey, and Christina Weiland, 2017) and Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children(2011). He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation, and is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Christopher T. King is a labor economist and a senior research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs’ Ray Marshall Center, which he directed from 1991 to 2014. He has been conducting research on workforce and education issues for over four decades and has authored numerous books, articles and reports. He led the team that designed CareerAdvance, a sectoral, career pathway strategy for the parents of children served by Tulsa’s early childhood education programs, in 2009 and is part of the team conducting the evaluation of the program. In 2012, he was selected as one of twenty leaders in the Aspen Institute’s inaugural class of Ascend 2-Generation Fellows. Earlier, Dr. King was assistant professor of economics at the University of Utah (1973-1976), an economist with the U.S. Secretary of Labor (1976-1980), and director of research and evaluation for job training in the Texas Governor’s Office (1983-1985). He has a Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University.
Amanda Morris is a developmental scientist with research interests in parenting, emotion regulation, and developmental psychopathology. Her research focuses on the role of emotion regulation in child and adolescent adjustment and the ways in which children learn successful regulation skills. She received her PhD. from Temple University in Psychology, was a post doctoral fellow at Arizona State University, and taught at the University of New Orleans for five years. She is currently an Associate Professor at Oklahoma State University in the Department of Human Development and Family Science.
Mallory Schmidt is a project coordinator across several projects at Oklahoma State University at Tulsa, including NU2Gen’s three main studies with CAP Tulsa. She previously served as a Research Assistant/Data Manager for CAP FLS – the lab’s original two-generation study of Head Start. Mallory completed her Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family Sciences at OSU-Tulsa, and held a research internship in the Family and Youth Development Project Lab. She later graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Master of Science in Research Administration.
Research Coordinators and Assistants
Catherine Zhong is the research coordinator for the Northwestern University Two-Generation Research Institute at the Institute for Policy Research. They are a first-year master’s student studying Marriage and Family Therapy at The Family Institute at Northwestern University.
catherinezhong2023@u.northwestern.edu
Eman Kasha Akhtar is a part-time research assistant for the Northwestern University Two-Generation Research Institute at the Institute for Policy Research. She also holds a position as a research assistant in the Education Statistics division at American Institutes for Research. She graduated in 2023 with a B.S. in Social Policy and Statistics from Northwestern University. She was also community co-president of QUEST+, Northwestern’s first-generation and low-income student organization. She is currently working on a paper about the decade-long career patterns of parents in the CAP Family Life Study using a mixed-methods approach.
Mia Xia is a research assistant for the Northwestern University Two-Generation Research Institute at the Institute for Policy Research. She is a junior studying Social Policy and American Studies with a minor in Data Science and certificate in Civic Engagement and mentors K-8 students through Supplies For Dreams and Books & Breakfast. In the future, she hopes to work in education policy to address structural inequities present within school systems.
Divya Gupta is a research assistant for the Northwestern University Two-Generation Research Institute at the Institute for Policy Research. She is a junior studying Journalism and Economics with a minor in Data Science. She aims to work in journalism and education in the future.