Lab Members

Jessica is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Global Mental Health and Addiction Program (GMAP) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Originally from Rwanda, she received a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Montclair State University and a BA in Psychology and Biology from Hendrix College. Her research and clinical interests are centered around fostering resilience in marginalized, at-risk, and underserved populations affected by trauma both in the US and globally. The ultimate goal of her work is to make sustainable, community-driven, culturally-tailored, evidence-based interventions more accessible to these communities. Her recent projects have been focused on discrimination-related trauma, intergenerational trauma transmission, and understanding mechanisms that underlie risk and resilience.

Hannah is a graduate MPH student at the Yale School of Public Health in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. She is from Hanover, NH, and received her BA in Anthropology and French from Amherst College.

Marie-Claire “MC” Meadows is a PhD student in the department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Her research includes the physical and mental health impacts of climate-induced disasters, extreme temperatures, and pollution. She works as a research assistant for the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) Project. Marie-Claire received her MPH in Chronic Disease Epidemiology from the Yale School of Public Health in 2022 and her BA in Global Health from the University of Connecticut in 2020.

Sahra is a PhD candidate at the University College London (UCL), in the Division of Psychiatry. Sahra is a mixed-method researcher and her main research interests are occupational trauma, secondary trauma, PTSD, and the mental health of families of high-risk occupational groups. She was successful in being awarded a place on the Yale-UCL funded collaborative student exchange programme, and worked as visiting researcher under Dr. Sarah Lowe’s supervision in the Trauma and Mental Health Lab. In addition, Sahra worked as an assistant psychologist in different hospitals and is currently going through the supervision process to become a schema therapist.

Petty Tineo is currently a third-year doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at Montclair State University (MSU). She grew up in Paterson, NJ and holds an MA degree in Clinical Psychology from MSU and BS degree in Psychology from Seton Hall University. She has prior clinical experience working as a clinical extern in a community mental health clinic, college counseling center, and in private practice. Petty also serves on the Executive Board of the Latino Mental Health Association of New Jersey. Her research interests include multicultural psychology, acculturation of minority groups, depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation in young adults, understanding ethnic and cultural differences in exposure to traumatic events, and the long-term mental health outcomes in the aftermath of trauma.

Zerbrina Valdespino-Hayden: Zerbrina graduated with a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Montclair State University in New Jersey. She completed her clinical internship at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Healthcare Center in North Chicago, IL. Zerbrina subsequently obtained a postdoctoral fellowship at the Road Home Program: National Center for Veterans and their Families at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL. Zerbrina's clinical areas of interest include treating trauma in diverse and underserved populations using a cognitive-behavioral approach, massed PTSD treatment, and military sexual trauma. Her research interests are primarily focused on understanding the socio-ecological factors that facilitate resilience in individuals and communities that have experienced trauma and more specifically, identifying the psychosocial mechanisms underlying sexual assault survivors' disclosure, reporting, and treatment-seeking behaviors. Her dissertation is entitled Rape Myth Acceptance and Acknowledgment: Predictors of Reporting Sexual Assault and Service-Seeking.

Julia is a MPH graduate at the Yale School of Public Health in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. She is from Fairfield, CT and received her BA in Medicine, Health, and Society from Vanderbilt University in 2020. Her research interests revolve around child and adolescent mental health, and she is specifically interested in childhood trauma, parent/child relationships, and resilience. Currently, she is researching post-traumatic growth among people who have experienced long-term physical effects as a result of COVID-19 infection.