I have been in the Department of Psychology at Haverford College since 2012 and am a core faculty member in the Tri-Colleges Asian American Studies faculty working group. I am also a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of Pennsylvania (PS017847) and have a small clinical practice at Bryn Mawr Psychological Associates.  

I am a clinical and cultural psychologist whose research broadly examines stress, coping, health and well-being in the context of relationships and families. In particular, I study how stress is linked with social-emotional processes, with an emphasis on social support (i.e., the use of relationships for assistance and comfort) and emotion regulation (e.g., expressivity-restraint). My work involves the intensive observation of social interactions and expressive behavior, both in naturalistic environments and in experimental laboratory settings. I take a multi-method approach to measuring health, including the assessment of relationship well-being, psychological health, and biological stress responses (e.g., the HPA-axis and its hormonal end-product cortisol). Ultimately, my research seeks to understand how stressors ‘get under the skin’ to shape social interaction, emotion experience, and health, and whether and how various kinds of social support influence those linkages.

My work primarily uses a culture, gender, and social class framework to examine these social-emotion-health linkages. Specifically, I study how culture differentially shapes social and emotion processes implicated in stress and coping across individualistic and collectivistic groups, with a focus on Asian American and Latinx health and social functioning. I research cultural values, such as interdependence, collectivism, and group harmony values that contribute to cultural variation in the use of social support, as well as emotion regulation processes that are relevant to social functioning and well-being. In addition, I examine gender differences in social support provision, and the links between couple social behavior (social engagement, emotion expression) and health in the family. The most recent branch of my research focuses on social class-based cultural norms in first generation college students’ coping and help-seeking behaviors.

I have over 30 scholarly publications in scientific journals such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Family Psychology, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Asian American Journal of Psychology, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, and Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.

I was honored with early career awards for my research in 2016 by Asian American Psychological Association and 2017 by the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program. I also received the 2019 Chace-Parker Teaching Award at Haverford College.

I received my BA in Psychology and Anthropology from Barnard College, and my MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology from UCLA.  I completed my predoctoral clinical internship at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, and my postdoctoral clinical residency at the Center for Cognitive Therapy in the Department of Psychiatry at University of Pennsylvania.

In my spare time, I enjoy tea and a good book, trying new foods, dance fitness, and spending time with my husband and my three beautiful children.