Dr. Mylien Duong is the Senior Director of Research at the Constructive Dialogue Institute (CDI), a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to equipping the next generation of Americans with the mindset and skill set to engage in dialogue across differences.

Trained as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Duong has spent the last 12 years developing psychology-based tools for educational spaces, with an emphasis on tools that are evidence-based, easy to implement, and feasible for real-world settings. She began her career as an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Psychiatry. There, she led federally funded research projects to develop and evaluate evidence-based psychological interventions for children and adolescents in educational settings. She then became a senior research scientist at the Committee for Children, a leading provider of social emotional learning curricula for K-12 and out of school settings.

She has a deep passion for translating psychological research into effective education materials that can be used in everyday life. She’s developed programs to prevent student depression, substance abuse, and delinquency, and to foster student growth mindset, belonging, and emotion management. She also has worked extensively with the adults who provide care for youth, including teachers, case workers, and school mental health providers, to attend to their own well-being, develop awareness of their implicit biases, and build effective classroom communities.

She has received over $20 million in grant funding and published over 50 scientific articles and book chapters, and her educational tools have been used by over 100,000 educators across the United States.

She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and her dog, Luke.