After training with Megan Gunnar, PhD, at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development, she received her PhD from the Department of Human Development at Cornell University in 2005. She has longstanding interests in children's physiologic regulation, their development within caregiving contexts, and in understanding mechanisms and trajectories from early life experiences to later physical health, mental health, cognitive/educational, and socio-emotional outcomes. Her work focuses on the role of adverse, protective and promotive factors in families experiencing poverty and among newly immigrated and refugee families, and includes testing promising intervention approaches.