Making Caring Common
Raising kids who care about others and the common good.
team.jpg

Team

The Making Caring Common team, based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, includes experts in moral and ethical development, empathy, social-emotional learning (SEL), parenting, and data analysis; seasoned communications and digital media professionals; project managers; and former classroom teachers. Each fall, we welcome a new cohort of graduate student interns who contribute a wide range of skills, experiences, and perspectives.

Our Team

team.jpg

The Making Caring Common team, based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, includes experts in moral and ethical development, empathy, social-emotional learning (SEL), parenting, and data analysis; seasoned communications and digital media professionals; project managers; and former classroom teachers. Each fall, we welcome a new cohort of graduate student interns who contribute a wide range of skills, experiences, and perspectives.

 

 

Faculty Director

Rick Weissbourd

Richard Weissbourd

Faculty Director

Richard Weissbourd is a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Kennedy School of Government. His work focuses on moral development, the nature of hope, vulnerability and resilience in childhood, parenting, and effective schools and services for children. He directs the Making Caring Common Project, a national effort to make moral and social development priorities in child-raising and to provide strategies to schools and parents for promoting in children caring, a commitment to justice and other key moral and social capacities. He leads an initiative to reform college admissions, Turning the Tide, which has engaged over 300 college admissions offices. This initiative seeks to elevate ethical character, reduce excessive achievement pressure and increase equity and access in the college admissions process. He is also conducting research on how older adults can better mentor young adults and teenagers in developing caring, ethical, mature romantic relationships.   

He is a founder of several interventions for children facing risks, including ReadBoston and WriteBoston, city-wide literacy initiatives led by Mayor Menino. He is also a founder of a pilot school in Boston, the Lee Academy, that begins with children at 3 years old. He has advised on the city, state and federal levels on family policy, parenting and school reform and has written for numerous scholarly and popular publications and blogs, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today and NPR.  He is the author of The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America’s Children and What We Can Do About It (Addison-Wesley, 1996), named by the American School Board Journal as one of the top 10 education books of all time.  His most recent book, The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development (Houghton Mifflin 2009), was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 24 books of 2009. 

mcc@gse.harvard.edu | 617.384.9544

 

 

College Admissions

Tricia Ross Anderson, HGSE

Trisha Ross Anderson

College Admission Program Director

Trisha Ross Anderson is the College Admission Program Director for Making Caring Common. She is an original member of MCC, having worked in leadership roles since it was founded in 2013. Trisha helped to research and write many MCC reports, including Turning the Tide, which aims to work with colleges to promote the importance of ethical character, reduce excessive achievement pressure, and promote access and equity for all in the college admission process. With Richard Weissbourd, she leads MCC’s efforts to collaborate with many colleges and organizational partners to facilitate original research, advocate for meaningful change, and develop tools and resources for diverse stakeholders in the admissions process. Formerly a classroom teacher, Trisha holds an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

trisha_ross@gse.harvard.edu | 617.496.4541

 
Brennan Barnard, HGSE

BRENNAN BARNARD

College Admission Program Advisor

Brennan Barnard is the College Admissions Program Advisor at Making Caring Common.

Brennan has worked as teacher, dorm parent, advisor, coach, admission officer, and student affairs administrator at a number of independent high schools and colleges and serves as the Director of College Counseling at The Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire and at US Performance Academy, an online independent high school for elite athletes.

Brennan is a member of the Advisory Board for the New Hampshire College and University Council’s New Hampshire Scholars Program and on the Executive Committee for the Character Collaborative. He presents regularly on athletic recruiting, mindfulness, discipline, and other topics in college admission. He has written about college admission for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes.com, HuffPost, Concord Monitor, Journal of College Admission, and other publications. He has also been featured in articles in The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press and is an occasional guest on New Hampshire Public Radio.

A native of suburban Philadelphia and practicing Quaker, he is a graduate of Westtown Friends School. Brennan earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Spanish from Franklin & Marshall College and a master’s degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration from The University of Vermont. This father of two lives in Hopkinton, New Hampshire where he is a volunteer firefighter.

brennan_barnard@gse.harvard.edu

 
Julius DiLorenzo

Julius DiLorenzo

College Admission Program Coordinator

Julius DiLorenzo is the College Admissions Program Coordinator at Making Caring Common.  

Prior to joining MCC, Julius spent five years working in college admissions at his alma mater, Occidental College. His research interests focus on increasing equity in the admissions process with particular attention to how school counselors and admissions officers are trained to produce and interpret application material. Having recently completed his Ed.M. at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Julius is eager to continue exploring the intersection of research and practice in the dynamic higher education landscape.  

Originally from Chicago, Julius comes to Boston after ten years in Los Angeles. Though he’s traded in his sunglasses for snow boots, he’s thrilled to be in a walkable (and bikeable) city. 


Media & Communications

Alison Cashin, HGSE

ALISON CASHIN

Director of Communications

As Director of Communications for Making Caring Common, Alison oversees all aspects of media and communications for the organization, with a focus on elevating the national conversation about raising caring, ethical children.

An award-winning communicator and advocate, Alison helps organizations put their ideas into practice, build and engage diverse audiences, and develop and communicate messages that change hearts and minds. Her work has been featured in major national outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, and The New Yorker. Prior to her role at MCC, she worked to advance the role of women in national politics and was part of the communications team that supported the national effort to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Alison earned a Master of Science in Journalism at Boston University, including a journalism fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria, and a Bachelor of Arts in English at Vassar College. She is passionate about good writing, engaging narrative, and spending time with her family.

alison_cashin@gse.harvard.edu | 617.495.1959


K-12 & Parenting

Kiran Bhai

Kiran Bhai

Schools & Parenting Programs Director

As Program Director, Kiran Bhai oversees Making Caring Common’s K-12 and parenting programs, focusing on expanding empathy, justice, and care across differences. 

Kiran is passionate about education, mental health, and the holistic wellbeing of children and youth. Prior to her time at MCC, Kiran was a school counselor in Massachusetts and New Mexico and worked at several global health nonprofits across the country focusing on mental health. 

Kiran received her Master’s in Education and Counseling from Harvard Graduate School of Education and her Bachelor of Arts in Global Health from Duke University.

kiran_bhai@gse.harvard.edu

 
Nora E.

Nora Elton

Curriculum Intern

Nora is the Curriculum Intern at Making Caring Common and completing her masters at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, within the Education, Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship program.

Nora is interested in the ways positive relationship building can promote equity and inclusion and help all stakeholders in a school community feel seen, heard, and cared for. She has worked as an arts educator and curriculum developer for over 15 years in schools, museums, and community organizations with toddlers through adults. Supporting student voice and building empathy is central to Nora’s work and recently she has focused on the positive impacts of strengthening parent-school partnerships. 

Nora earned a Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from New York University and a Master of Arts in Teaching in Art Education from Tufts University. 

 
Monica Figueroa

Monica Figueroa

Schools & Parenting Programs Coordinator

Monica is the Schools & Parenting Programs Coordinator for Making Caring Common. She is passionate about learning design, research, and innovative practices, with a focus on mental health and holistic well-being, particularly in underserved communities.

As a former Teach for America educator with over five years of experience teaching Kindergarten and Special Education in Colorado, she remains dedicated to providing children with transformative learning opportunities that help unlock their full potential. Her commitment to educational excellence extends beyond the classroom, as she has actively collaborated with Denver Public Schools and the Iowa Department of Education on policy initiatives aimed at increasing family engagement and creating opportunities for culturally and linguistically diverse learners.

Monica holds a graduate degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Entrepreneurship and Leadership, where she launched her own venture, Learning Momentos.

Outside of work, you can find her saying hello to strangers, cooking for friends, climbing boulders, running to catch a flight, or on search for the best street tacos.

 
Michael McLaughlin

Michael McLaughlin

Schools & Parenting Programs Manager

Mike is the Schools & Parenting Programs Manager for Making Caring Common. He is passionate about making schools more equitable and nurturing environments that better support student mental health. As a teacher, project manager, and program manager, he has supported hundreds of schools, districts, and county offices of education by leading far reaching projects on SEL implementation, data collection and sharing, bridging differences, leadership development, and collecting student, family, staff, and teacher feedback to inform school and district improvements.

He has also worked for several presidential campaigns as a Field Organizer, Regional Field Director, and Regional Get Out The Vote Director and cares deeply about protecting and expanding voting rights. 

Outside of work, Mike is an avid naturalist and surfer who loves spending time in the ocean and exploring the natural wonders of the world.

michael_mclaughlin@gse.harvard.edu


Research

Milena Batanova, HGSE

MILENA BATANOVA

Director of Research & Evaluation

As the Director of Research & Evaluation at Making Caring Common, Milena oversees evaluation projects involving MCC's strategies for K-12 schools and caregivers, as well as research studies on timely topics relevant to caring and well-being. She is passionate about translating research into practice and using the latest science to inform MCC's growing library of resources. 

Before joining Making Caring Common, Milena was a postdoctoral fellow and then a Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University. That's where her love for applied research started to take shape, as she helped to design, implement, and evaluate the AIM Buddy Project, an SEL and character education curriculum for elementary school-aged youth. 

Milena received her Ph. in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Texas at Austin and her Master's degree in Communication Studies at Arizona State University. She has also worked as a Service Learning Coordinator, Lecturer, and Mental Health Practitioner. In her free time, Milena enjoys being in nature and amongst people and dreams of writing a book or screenplay one day.

milena_batanova@gse.harvard.edu | 617.384.7738

 

Joe McIntyre

Research Advisor

Joe McIntyre is a lecturer on education at HGSE. He teaches statistics and questionnaire design. His research interests include applying methods from statistics to address questions in education. He is especially interested in measuring student experiences and in answering questions around gender and education. McIntyre has a B.A. in mathematics from Dartmouth College, an Ed.M. in human development and psychology from HGSE, and has previous experience as a high school math instructor.Joe holds a B.A. in Mathematics from Dartmouth College and has previous experience as a high school math instructor.

joseph_mcintyre@gse.harvard.edu

 
Eric Torres, HGSE

Eric Torres

Research Intern

Eric Torres is a Research Intern with Making Caring Common and a second-year Ph.D. student in Education at Harvard University.

His work with the MCC team focuses on promoting dialogue across political difference and the psychology of parental decisions related to school choice. Prior to his work with Making Caring Common, Eric taught classes in adult education at various non-profits in Austin, Texas, emphasizing the interplay of ESL, Adult Basic Education, and philosophical practice. He has also served two terms with Americorps and Americorps VISTA.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Spanish from Washington University in St. Louis and a Master’s degree in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Outside of his work and study, Eric likes fiction writing, bike mechanics, weight training and spending aimless time with the people he cares about.