About Me

My full Vietnamese name is Đỗ Thanh Hằng (in Vietnamese, last name goes first and first name goes last). I go by Hang (pronounced "hung") or Heather. I spent most of my childhood and adolescence studying piano at a conservatory of music and competing in national and international piano competitions, aspiring to become a professional classical pianist. At the same time, I juggled rigorous academics at a specialized high school, where I pursued intensive coursework in biology. I was also fascinated by how the environment and culture shape human development. This dual curiosity eventually led me to Oberlin College, where I could explore both music and developmental psychology.

Growing up in a middle-income country and seeing how children and families in low- and middle-income contexts are underrepresented in research, I was deeply inspired to dedicate my work to understanding and supporting these communities. After graduating with a B.A. in Psychology from Oberlin in 2021, I continued to pursue an M.Ed. in Human Development & Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. At Harvard, I worked with Dr. Dana Charles McCoy on disseminating the Caregiver-Reported Early Development Instrument (CREDI), a population-level tool measuring early childhood development from birth to age three, and with Dr. Si Chen on One Village One Preschool (OVOP), an intervention program promoting high-quality early childhood education, especially for left-behind children in rural China.

Finding applied work rewarding and intellectually enriching, I sought further training in applied developmental psychology. This led me to pursue a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Development at the University of Pennsylvania, working with Dr. Sharon Wolf. I am currently involved in an intervention program that focuses on strengthening communication, stress management, and social-emotional skills among caregivers and adolescents in peri-urban Ghana. 

Outside of work, I enjoy biking, doing pilates, thrifting, people watching in the park, café hopping, and playing piano.