Dana Charles McCoy is an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). Her work focuses on understanding the ways that poverty-related risk factors in children's home, school, and neighborhood environments affect the development of their cognitive and socioemotional skills in early childhood. She is also interested in the development, refinement, and evaluation of early intervention programs designed to promote positive development and resilience in young children, particularly in terms of their self-regulation and executive function. McCoy's research is centered in both domestic and international contexts, including Brazil, Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia. She has a particular interest in interdisciplinary theory, causal methodology, and ecologically valid measurement. Before joining the HGSE faculty, McCoy served as an NICHD National Research Service Award post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Center on the Developing Child. She graduated with an A.B. in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Dartmouth College and received her Ph.D. in Applied Psychology with a concentration in Quantitative Analysis from New York University. McCoy's work has been published in journals such as Developmental Psychology, Child Development, Pediatrics, and The Lancet. She has presented her work to audiences around the world, including the WHO, UNICEF, and the World Bank.