Our Team

Leadership

Dr. Colette (Coco) Auerswald MD, MS

Colette (Coco) Auerswald, MD, MS (Co-Director)

Colette (Coco) Auerswald, MD, MS is a pediatrician specialized in adolescent medicine. She is a Professor in the Division of Community Health Sciences at Berkeley Public Health. Dr. Auerswald employs community collaborative, youth-partnered, and mixed methods approaches to studying the social determinants of health and structural interventions to improve health and wellbeing for marginalized youth. She is committed to contributing to the improving the inclusion and wellbeing youth experiencing homelessness, LGBTQ youth, and low-income youth of color and immigrant youth through her work. She is the co-founder and co-director of i4Y (Innovations for Youth) the founder and faculty lead for the Ending Youth Homelessness Catalyst Group, and the faculty mentor for Youth and Allies Against Homelessness (or YAAH).

Dr. Emily Ozer_White Borders

Emily Ozer, PhD (Co-Director)

Professor Ozer’s research as a clinical/community psychologist in public health focuses on promoting the healthy development and empowerment of adolescents, bridging participatory research approaches and prevention science in school-based interventions. Her research interests include school-based health promotion and prevention programs, post-traumatic stress disorder, and community-based participatory research. She is proud to work in partnership with San Francisco Peer Resources and the San Francisco Unified School District to help address educational and health inequities, and to work on strengthening Berkeley as an institution for supporting community-engaged scholarship.

Valerie B. Shapiro, PhD (Co-Director)

Dr. Shapiro, is an associate professor, Ph.D. Program Director, and Co-Director of the Center for Prevention Research in Social Welfare at the UCB. Dr. Shapiro's researches the prevention of mental, emotional, and behavioral problems in children and youth through the adoption, implementation, and sustainability of effective prevention practices. To promote the use of effective prevention practice, her scholarship focuses on how to (1) set the stage for communities to adopt and sustain a science-based approach to prevention, (2) implement programs successfully, and (3) assess youth outcomes in routine practice.

Dr. Marieka S

Marieka Schotland, PhD (Executive Director)

Dr. Schotland is a community psychologist. She has a wide range of substantive expertise in positive school climate and connection, restorative justice, youth program evaluation and health promotion among diverse adolescents. She brings her outstanding management skills to the position of Executive Director where she is responsible for managing the Center’s affiliates, recruiting and maintaining the Community and Youth Advisory Boards, collaborating with community and academic partners, contributing to strategic planning and decision-making, facilitating, managing the Fellowship program and managing all planning, outreach, communications and events.

Steering Committee

We have developed youth and community advisory boards over the years to continue our deep and long-term engagement with community partners, informing the development, implementation and dissemination of our research.

We have currently assembled a steering committee of scholars, policymakers, care providers, and community members who will guide I4Y’s development and direction, including local, national, and international leaders in multiple sectors influencing adolescent well-being. We plan to establish a parallel adolescent advisory board, trained and scaffolded for meaningful engagement to  effectively influence and advise I4Y development.

Julianna Deardorff, PhD

Dr. Deardorff is the head of the Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health (MCAH) program, focused on early life adversity, pubertal development, and the health and well-being of adolescents, with a specific focus on Latino youth and young adults. Her research centers pubertal development, sexual and reproductive health during adolescence and young adulthood, mental health, and risk and protective factors.

Dr. Stone

Susan Stone, PhD

Susan Stone is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Catherine Mary and Eileen Clare Hutto Professor of Social Services in Public Education at the School of Social Welfare. Her interests include understanding family and school influences on child and adolescent academic performance, especially for urban and at-risk children and youth; parenting under stress; family treatment; linking families, schools, and communities; school-based social work practice; mixing quantitative and qualitative methods; and multi-level statistical modeling.

Kristine Madson, MD

Kristine Madsen, a professor at the School of Public Health, is a pediatrician and research scientist with expertise in the design and evaluation of interventions related to cardiovascular risk in youth. Her research is focused on identifying policies and programs that will improve the nutrition and physical-activity environments for youth and their families, and reduce health inequities.

Deborah L. McKoy, PhD

Dr. McKoy is Executive Director and Founder of the UCB Center for Cities and Schools at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development and a lecturer in City and Regional Planning and the Graduate School of Education. Her research and teaching focus on intersections of educational reform, urban & metropolitan planning, community development, and public policy. Central is the critical role of young people in urban and metropolitan transformation.

Dr. Sandra McKoy

Sandra McCoy, PhD

Dr. McCoy is an Associate Professor in Residence in the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She studies how social, economic, and cultural forces influence disease transmission and health outcomes. Dr. McCoy has explored these relationships through the lens of HIV infection and reproductive health. Using diverse approaches, her goal is to identify innovative, cost-effective, and scalable interventions to overcome global health challenges.

Dr. Erin Murphy-Graham

Erin Murphy-Graham, PhD

Dr. Murphy-Graham works in comparative and international education, teaching international development and qualitative research methods.Her research focuses on: the process by which education fosters the empowerment of girls and women, and conceptualization of empowerment; the role of education in changing how students relate, particularly in intimate relationships and trust building; 3) the evaluation of educational empowerment programs for youth and adults in Latin America.

Professor Ndola Prata

Ndola Prata, MD, MSc

Dr. Prata is a founding co-Director of i4Y, the Director of the Bixby Center for Population, Health & Sustainability, a Professor in Residence in Maternal and Child Health and the second holder of the Fred H. Bixby Endowed Chair in Population and Family Planning in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. She is a physician and medical demographer from Angola. Her research focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of maternal, sexual and reproductive health interventions that maximize distribution and financing to increase access to care, contraceptives and abortion in developing countries, particularly for underserved populations. 

Postdoctoral researchers

Amia Nash Chambers

Amia Nash Chambers

Kamryn Morris

Kamryn Morris

Andrea Perez Portillo

Andrea Perez Portillo

Laura Petry

Laura Petry

Ashley Noel Metzger

Ashley Noel Metzger

Patrick Michael Robinson

Patrick Michael Robinson

Benjamin Parry

Benjamin Parry

Center Staff 

  • Brian Villa, MPH (UC Berkeley School of Public Health - Health and Social Behavior), MSW (UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare - Strengthening Organizations & Communities)
  • Siti Juwariyah, MBA, Research Center Manager

Affiliated Faculty

  • Jennifer Ahern, PhD, MPH (UC Berkeley School of Public Health- epidemiology)
  • Jill Berrick, PhD, MSW (UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare)
  • Ronald Dahl, MD (UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Institute for Human Development, Center on the Developing Adolescent)
  • Hildy Fong, PhD, MHS (UC Berkeley School of Public Health- global health, adolescent health)
  • Lia C. Haskin Fernald, PhD, MBA (UC Berkeley School of Public Health- nutrition, international economic interventions)
  • Denise Herd, PhD (UC Berkeley School of Public Health- anthropology, African American youth and substance use)
  • Nikki Jones, PhD (UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies)
  • Douglas P. Jutte, MD, MPH (UC Berkeley School of Public Health- pediatrics, community development and health)
  • Jane Mauldon, PhD (UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy- demography, public policy)
  • Meredith Minkler, DrPH (UC Berkeley School of Public Health- community based participatory research)
  • Alexandra Minnis, PhD, MPH (UC Berkeley School of Public Health and RTI International- epidemiologist, social determinants of adolescent health)
  • Nancy Padian, PhD, MPH (UC Berkeley School of Public Health- structural interventions for adolescent reproductive health in low-resource settings) 
  • Janelle Scott, PhD (UC Berkeley School of Education)
  • Jennifer Skeem, PhD (UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare & Goldman School of Public Policy: Associate Dean of Research, juvenile justice)
  • Ahna Suleiman, DrPH (UCLA, Center for the Developing Adolescent)

External Academic and Research Affiliates