Dr. Milena Batanova

Milena is the Director of Research & Evaluation at Making Caring Common, a national effort based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to make moral and social development priorities in how we teach and raise our young people. In her role, she sits at the nexus of research and practice to ensure that MCC’s strategies for K–12 schools and parents are science-backed, feasible to implement, and scalable. Milena oversees both process and outcome evaluation studies of these strategies. She also conducts research on timely topics related to moral and social life, including loneliness, mental health, purpose and meaning. Recent national reports include, Loneliness in America: The tip of the iceberg?, On Edge: Understanding and preventing young adults’ mental health challenges, and Caring for the Caregivers: The critical link between parent and teen mental health.

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. There, she co-led a project to design, implement, and evaluate the AIM Buddy Project, a social-emotional learning (SEL) and character building elementary school curriculum developed in partnership with WGBH and the creators of Arthur. Milena received her Ph.D. in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Texas at Austin, where she specialized in risk and resilience, empathy, and aggression in adolescence. She obtained her master’s degree in Communication Studies at Arizona State University, where she also worked as a Service Learning Coordinator and Lecturer. Before that, Milena was a Mental Health Practitioner at a residential rehabilitation center for adults with mental illness.