Email: vmd248@nyu.edu
Program: PhD in Counseling Psychology
Year entered Program: 2015
Research Interests: Mindfulness, Parenting, Disruptive Behavioral Problems and Disorders, Parent Training, Emotion Regulation, Juvenile Justice, School-to-Prison Pipeline
Principal Advisor(s): Dr. Anil Chacko
Research Description/Bio:
Throughout her professional career, Tori has committed her efforts to working with at-risk children and adolescents from high-poverty communities. In particular, her year serving with City Year, an AmeriCorps program, and being a teaching assistant in Cornell's Prisoner Education Program have informed her research interests, which include: mindfulness-based interventions for children with behavioral problems (ADHD, ODD,CD, etc.), cognitive and behavioral therapeutic approaches, the juvenile justice system, and the school-to-prison pipeline.
At NYU and as part of her involvement in Dr. Chacko's FACES Lab, she has taken a leadership role on two projects: in 2016-2018 the Little Flower Yoga Study, which evaluated a school-based yoga program and its impact on the emotion regulation and attention of students in kindergarten and first grade classes. Currently she is the co-Principal Investigator on the Mindful Parenting and Behavioral Parent Training Project, which is evaluating the impacts of a combined mindfulness-based parenting group and behavioral parent training (or BPT) intervention for parents of children with disruptive behavioral problems on several outcomes related to child behavior, family functioning, and family quality of life.
She is currently on internship at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, MD on their Child and Family Therapy track. At her placement, she conducts psychological and diagnostic assessments, individual psychotherapy, and family therapy with children/adolescents and their families from the Baltimore community. She completed her previous practicums at the Center for Counseling and Community Wellbeing, the NYU Child Study Center, SUNY Downstate Children's Mental Health Center, NYC Health+Hospitals: Gouverneur, and Harlem Children's Zone, where her clinical training experiences included: individual therapy with children, adolescents, and adults; psychoeducational and neuropsychological testing with children and adolescents; leading process therapy groups of adolescents and (social) skills-based treatment groups of children and young adults; and family therapy (structural and parent training).
Tori received her B.A. in Psychology and Near Eastern Sciences from Cornell University, where she conducted research under Dr. Steve Ceci in his Child Witness and Cognition Lab in the Department of Human Development.