The MAST Center Leadership Team

Mindy Scott, Ph.D., is the MAST Center’s Principal Investigator and leads the Program Implementation and Evaluation research area. She is a sociologist and family demographer at Child Trends whose primary research interests relate to family formation, family strengthening, responsible fatherhood, and adolescent pregnancy prevention. Dr. Scott studies the design and implementation of both federally and non-federally funded healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs through several other OPRE-funded projects focused on youth, parents in complex families, and fathers.

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Elizabeth Wildsmith, Ph.D., is the MAST Center’s Project Manager and leads the Center’s capacity-building activities. Dr. Wildsmith is a sociologist and family demographer at Child Trends whose research has examined reproductive health, family formation and childbearing, and racial and ethnic disparities in well-being. She is also the Deputy Director of the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families, co-leading its Fatherhood, Family Structure, and Family Dynamics research area.

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Susan L. Brown, Ph.D., co-leads the Relationship Patterns and Trends research area. Dr. Brown is Distinguished Research Professor and Chair of Sociology at Bowling Green State University, where she is also Co-Director of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research. Dr. Brown is a family demographer whose research addresses the implications of the rapid transformation of American family life, with a focus on union dynamics and their consequences for well-being at various stages of the life course.

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Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Ph.D., co-leads the Relationship Patterns and Trends research area. Dr. Guzzo is a sociologist and family demographer at Bowling Green State University whose research focuses on childbearing and reproductive behaviors, family formation and stability, and complex family structures. She is also Director of the Center for Family and Demographic Research.

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Wendy Manning, Ph.D., co-leads the Relationship Patterns and Trends research area. Dr. Manning is a sociologist and family demographer at Bowling Green State University whose research focuses on young adult relationships, including cohabitation and marriage among different-gender and same-gender couples. She is also the Co-Director of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research, Director of the Center for Family and Demographic Research, and the Dr. Howard E. and Penny Daum Aldrich Distinguished Professor of Sociology.

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Marta Alvira-Hammond, M.A., leads the Center’s strategic dissemination activities. She is a social demographer and research communications specialist at Child Trends whose work focuses on low-income families, immigrant families, self-sufficiency, and translating research for non-research audiences. She previously co-led strategic dissemination efforts for the OPRE-funded National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families, and is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Bowling Green State University, specializing in demography.