I am a behavioral scientist who studies how social environments, institutional structures, and educational experiences shape belonging, identity, and ethical development among young people, particularly those from underrepresented and historically marginalized communities.
My work draws on social psychological theory, developmental science, and Islamic cultural frameworks to study the peer networks, school environments, and community contexts that shape how young people grow and contribute to their communities. I approach research with a decolonial lens, combining qualitative methods (e.g., focus groups, youth participatory action research, in-depth interviews, digital storytelling) with quantitative approaches including multi-level modeling, social network analysis, structural equation modeling, and causal inference.
I am currently a Research Scientist and Program Specialist at Stanford SPARQ, an Islamic Psychology Research Fellow at the AlKaram Institute, and Research Director of Muraqaba Education, where I lead studies on educator well-being, character development, and social and emotional learning.
I earned my Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University, where my dissertation introduced a social network framework for understanding religious and civic identity development among Muslim adolescents. My postdoctoral training was at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and I worked in the EdTech industry for four years leading large-scale studies on student learning outcomes in K-8 education.