Marisha is an incoming graduate student of Psychology at Hunter College, City University of New York, class of 2023. She graduated with an MPH in Population and Family Health from Columbia University in 2020.
She spent much of her time at Mailman working on projects that dealt with preventing child maltreatment and other forms of childhood adversity. She is fluent in English and Hindi, and has worked in non profit settings in USA and India.
She is extremely passionate about understanding how earliest environments/contextual influences of children (operationalized as quality of family/community life, neighborhoods, schools, day care centers, family dynamics, social relationships, socio-economic and psycho-social status of caregivers, parenting practices, and parent-caregiver interactions to name a few) moderate the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on children’s socio-emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and academic development. She intends to pursue doctoral studies in Human Development with the goal to develop and evaluate community based interventions, and inform policies to prevent early life stress/trauma, build resilience, and promote outcomes in healthy childhood development in at-risk contexts while upholding principles of cultural humility, social justice, and racial equity.