Lina: Could you tell us a little about your personal journey? How did you move from studying economics in Colombia to focusing on child development and resilience?
Prof. Cuartas: My passion for child development and resilience is rooted in both my personal journey and the guidance of extraordinary mentors. I grew up in a household officially classified as poor by the Colombian government, in a dangerous neighborhood. Yet what I remember most vividly is not deprivation, but the warmth of a nurturing family environment. My parents instilled in me the conviction that my purpose in life was not merely to survive, but to thrive and to embrace the journey along the way.
Years later, while pursuing my Master’s degree at Universidad de los Andes, I had the privilege of learning from inspiring mentors whose work on education, human development, and the effects of civil conflict on children profoundly shaped my academic path. These experiences deepened my curiosity about how contextual adversity places children at risk, but also reinforced a lesson from my own life: adversity does not have to determine destiny. Since then, I have devoted myself, both professionally and personally, to understanding how we can ensure that every child, no matter their circumstances, grows up with the love, support, and the opportunities they need to flourish.
Lina: Your research now sits at the intersection of developmental psychology, public health, and climate change. How do you see these areas coming together?
Prof. Cuartas: Climate change represents a constellation of risks that, much like violence, poverty, and other complex adversities, endanger not only physical health, but also mental health, development, and overall wellbeing. Its effects ripple outward, undermining families, communities, and the broader trajectory of societal development. Grappling with a challenge of this magnitude requires genuinely multidisciplinary collaboration, bringing together diverse perspectives to capture its complexity. In truth, this need for multidisciplinarity extends beyond climate change: it is fundamental to advancing the social sciences as a whole.
Lina: Equity and justice are central to the Sustainability Group’s mission. In your work, how do you make sure that the communities most affected—often in the Global South—are centered in research and policy conversations?
Prof. Cuartas: Collaborating with researchers and practitioners from the Global South has been not only deeply enriching and educational for me, but also essential to ensuring that diverse perspectives are recognized and that true experts – i.e, the people who know their own contexts – are genuinely heard in research.
Lina: You’ve collaborated with organizations like UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Colombian government. What has that taught you about bridging research and policy?
Prof. Cuartas: Working with organizations such as UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Colombian government has taught me three key lessons about bridging research and policy. First, the foundation of any meaningful collaboration is listening: genuinely attending to partners’ needs, goals, values, and preferences. Second, this kind of attentive engagement broadens how we think about ‘evidence-based’ decision-making: beyond randomized trials, it must also encompass people’s perspectives, lived experiences, and even their biases. Finally, I have learned that maximizing the impact of these collaborations requires a mindset of innovation: treating existing research, policies, and practices as a starting point, and continually innovating upon them to generate transformational change for children and families.
Lina: In your classes at NYU, what topics or assignments resonate most with your students when it comes to sustainability and child development?
Prof. Cuartas: One topic that resonated strongly with my child development class last semester was our critical review of the ecological model of human development, which posits that children’s development is shaped by nested systems of influence ranging from the family to broader societal structures. However, we noted that this framework largely overlooks the natural environment (e.g., climate, biodiversity), and discussed the need for explicitly incorporating ecological and planetary factors into our understanding of development. I have continued to work on such an idea with my colleague Pamela Morris-Perez, and we are proposing a revision that infuses natural environments across all levels of the developmental ecology (stay tuned, as we’ll be sharing more about this soon!).
Lina: Looking ahead, what directions or projects are you most excited about at the CARE Lab?
Prof. Cuartas: I am excited to continue advancing Apapacho and Apapáchar, my parenting programs for violence prevention in Colombia, while also expanding my research on how climate change affects child development and how policies and interventions can be designed or adapted to support children and families in a warming world.
Lina: One final question—what advice would you give to students or young scholars who want to pursue research at the intersection of child development and social justice?
Prof. Cuartas: My advice is to embrace interdisciplinarity, seek out collaborators who know more than you in different areas, and treat every partnership as an opportunity to learn. Enjoy the journey without letting stress take over, and remember that creating change begins in your own context: by spreading love, building a culture of care with friends, family, and the natural environment, and engaging respectfully with those who think differently, you lay the foundation for advancing child development and social justice on a broader scale.
