Team

Jack P. Shonkoff, MD is the Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. In July 2024, Jack transitioned from his full-time role as Director of the Center on the Developing Child since its founding in 2006 to focus all of his energy on Connecting Science + Community, while maintaining his connection to the Center as Founding Director. He continues to chair the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, whose mission is to bring credible science to bear on public policy affecting young children.
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Douglas Jutte, MD, MPH is the founder and past executive director of the Build Healthy Places Network. BHPN is a national organization working across the sectors of health, community development, and finance to drive more impactful, collaborative neighborhood investments that reduce poverty, advance racial equity, and improve health. Working now as a consultant, Douglas also serves as a Board member for both Purpose Built Communities, a network of community-led revitalization efforts focused simultaneously on housing, education, wellbeing, and economic mobility, and the Center for Health Care Strategies, a policy design and implementation hub focused on improving outcomes for Medicaid enrollees.
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David R. Williams, PhD, MPH is the Norman Professor of Public Health at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard. The author of over 500 scientific papers, his research has enhanced our understanding of the ways in which race, socioeconomic status, racism, stress, health behaviors and religious involvement can affect health. The Everyday Discrimination Scale that he developed is the most widely used measure of discrimination in health studies. David is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
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Natalie Slopen, ScD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also an affiliated faculty member at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. As a social epidemiologist, Natalie works on a range of studies on topics related to the social and structural determinants of children’s health and health disparities across the life course. Her research critically examines the impacts of socioeconomic disadvantage, racism, neighborhood context, housing, and other adverse experiences on children’s mental and physical health outcomes and opportunities to promote health equity.
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Russell W. Booker, PhD, brings 30 years of experience to his national leadership role in the place-based field. As CEO of the Spartanburg Academic Movement, he advances the Movement 2030 initiative, focused on economic mobility for Spartanburg’s youth. After retiring as Superintendent of Spartanburg County School District Seven, Russell now chairs the StriveTogether Board and serves on several other boards, including Purpose Built Communities, the Mary Black Foundation. Russell has earned significant honors, including the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian award. A member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., he holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of South Carolina and serves as a By All Means Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s EdRedesign Lab in the Graduate School of Education. He holds two honorary doctorate degrees.
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David Edwards, MPP, is the Founding Executive Director of the Center for Urban Research and a Professor of Practice in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also the Senior Policy Advisor for Neighborhoods in the Office of the Mayor in the City of Atlanta. David is the former CEO of Purpose Built Communities, a nonprofit focused on revitalizing distressed urban neighborhoods. He also served as the Global Offerings Manager for IBM’s Smarter Cities program and served as Chief Policy Advisor for the City of Atlanta during the two terms of Mayor Shirley Franklin. David began his career at the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President in Washington D.C. He earned a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Duke University and Bachelor of Arts Degrees in Economics and History from Franklin and Marshall College.
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Carol Redmond Naughton, JD, is President and CEO of Purpose Built Communities, a leader in holistic neighborhood revitalization that partners with local organizations to drive community transformation. Carol has been with Purpose Built since its founding in 2009 and became CEO in 2020, where she now leads the organization’s strategic vision to increase its impact nationwide. Previously, she served as executive director of the East Lake Foundation and as general counsel and deputy executive director for the Atlanta Housing Authority. A leader in community development and racial equity, Carol serves on various boards, including the Low Income Investment Fund and the Fifth Third Bank National Community Advisory Forum. She holds a B.A. from Colgate University and a J.D. from Emory University School of Law.
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Blythe Keeler Robinson, JD, is the President and CEO of Sheltering Arms Early Education and Family Centers in Atlanta. She is an equity advocate and national leader in early education with more than 25 years of non-profit management experience. She is the President and CEO of Sheltering Arms Early Education and Family Centers in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a 2022 Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow and serves on several boards, including the International Women’s Forum – Georgia Chapter Board, the National Black Child Development Institute Board, the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast Governing Board, the Atlanta Speech School Advisory Board, and the PAACT (Promising All Atlanta Children Thrive) Founding Advisory Board. Blythe holds a B.A. from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a J.D. from The Georgetown University Law Center.
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Pat Levitt, PhD, is Chief Scientific Officer, Senior Vice President, Director of The Saban Research Institute, and Simms/Mann Chair in Developmental Neurogenetics, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; and WM Keck Provost Professor in Neurogenetics, Keck School of Medicine of USC. Pat’s basic research focuses on genetic and environmental contributions to building healthy and adaptive brain circuits across the lifespan. His clinical research focuses on measures of risk for toxic stress and resilience factors influenced by early experiences. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has engaged actively with policy makers in over 40 states and Mexico to promote wise investments in early childhood.
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Nathan A. Fox, PhD, is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology and the Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. Nathan’s research focuses on the biological bases of social and emotional behavior, and methods for assessing brain activity in infants and young children during tasks that elicit a range of emotions. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award from the Society for Research in Child Development. He was also the recipient in 2017 of the Ruane Award for Outstanding Research in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
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Patrícia Pelufo Silveira, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University and a scientific director at the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics & Mental Health, based at the Douglas Research Centre. With multidisciplinary training in General Pediatrics, Neonatal Follow-up, Developmental Neurobiology, and Neuroscience, Patricia’s research focuses on the interplay between early environmental factors and individual biological responses, and its impact on children’s healthy growth, neurodevelopment, and health/disease trajectories across the lifespan. she is an elected member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada, and a member of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child.
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Melanie Berry, PsyD, earned her doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the PGSP-Stanford PsyD Consortium. After completing her graduate studies, Melanie served as an Intervention Scientist at the Stress Neurobiology and Prevention Laboratory at the University of Oregon, where her work focused on developing, implementing, and testing novel interventions to support children and families facing adversity. Before her appointment as director of the Pediatric Innovation Initiative, she directed the Frontiers of Innovation initiative at the Center on the Developing Child, an international effort to accelerate the development, pilot testing, and adoption of science-informed innovations to achieve breakthrough impacts for young children facing adversity.
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Cerella Craig, MPH, earned her BS degree in Health and Social Inequalities from University of Connecticut and an MPH from Southern Connecticut State University. Cerella was a founding member of the JPB Community Leadership Council who brought extensive experience in community-based participatory research. This included service as a Community Mental Health Ambassador for the MOMS Partnership at Yale School of Medicine for seven years, where she co-facilitated Cognitive Behavioral Therapy courses to reduce depressive symptoms for low-income mothers. She also worked with Yale’s SEICHE Center for Health and Justice, supporting research and advocacy efforts to improve healthcare access for people with criminal justice involvement.
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Jeremy Guardiola, MA, earned his BA degree in economics modified with sociology and education from Dartmouth College and an MA in program evaluation and improvement research from the University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education. He has spent his career managing and evaluating programs designed to promote conditions in which families and young people thrive—and translating insights from this work for policy and practice. Prior to joining the Center, he helped run the Dartmouth College Native American Program and managed statewide research projects at the University of Michigan Youth Policy Lab. His experience spans a spectrum of policy domains, from child welfare to postsecondary access to workforce development.
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Beth Balawick drives the execution of communication strategies across the Connecting Science + Community initiative. Previously, she produced social-issue documentary multimedia and worked as a director, producer, and cinematographer on feature-length documentaries, including The List (2012), The Peacemaker (2016), Second Chance Kids (2017), Dawnland (2018), and Son of Fukushima (2021). She has also managed high-volume marketing campaigns in the SaaS technology space. As the Multimedia Producer at the Center on the Developing Child, she employed her storyteller’s lens to craft engaging, accessible science-based content to advance the Center’s mission.
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Al Race provides strategic direction for the communications team. He currently consults with social change organizations focused on translating science to shift mindsets around important issues affecting children, teens, and older people. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on the Developing Child and previously served as Deputy Director and Chief Knowledge Officer until his retirement in 2021. As part of the core leadership group that founded and grew the Center starting in 2006, his focus was on how to use credible, peer-reviewed, scientific knowledge to transform the landscape in which science-based innovation for children and families facing adversity can thrive and grow.
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Nat Kendall-Taylor, PhD, serves as Chief Executive Officer at the FrameWorks Institute. He oversees the organization’s pioneering, research-based approach to strategic communications, which uses methods from the social and behavioral sciences to measure how people understand complex socio-political issues and tests ways to reframe them to drive social change. He has consulted with and conducted research for the Center on the Developing Child and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child since 2008 and currently serves as a Senior Fellow.
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Ernesto D. Morales applies a strategic design lens to the communications team, turning complex ideas into clear, compelling visuals that drive understanding and action. With design experience focused on mission-driven organizations, his expertise spans brand identity, website design, and integrated campaigns. Ernesto values open communication and collaboration, working closely with team members to ensure each visual solution aligns with and amplifies the team’s mission and goals.
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Cindy Martell serves as Executive Coordinator to Dr. Shonkoff. In this role, she manages his administrative needs as well as supports office management tasks for the Center on the Developing Child.
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