Brie Reid
BIO
Developmental Psychologist and Postdoc. Mom of one.
Instagram: @brie_marie
Twitter: @briemreid
Brie Reid
“Becoming a parent forced me to prioritize what really mattered to me professionally.”
I am a developmental psychologist who examines how early psychosocial and nutritional contexts shape the trajectory of mental and physical health. My research specifically focuses on how nutrition and psychosocial adversity interact and become biologically embedded. I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Brown University’s Stress, Trauma, and Resilience Initiative, where I conduct research on prenatal and early childhood psychosocial and nutritional adversity. I am also currently a parent of one to my toddler!
My journey into science has been interesting, if not straightforward. In high school, I knew I wanted to do something that would improve human health and well-being, and I saw interior architecture as the way to do that. My plan, at the time, was to design healthcare, education, and public interiors. I did my BS at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology, which houses departments in design, human development, nutrition, health, and policy. The overarching goals fit with mine: improve lives by exploring and shaping human connections to natural, social and built environments. There, I fell in love with digging into interdisciplinary research on child development to design spaces that could support learning and health.
In my MA and time as a researcher at Cornell, I worked with an interdisciplinary research group focused on child development and nutrition intervention research to reduce malnutrition and health disparities in low- and middle-income countries. From that work, I turned my research towards better understanding the mechanisms of how stress and malnutrition become biologically embedded to predict health disparities. I began my doctoral work with Drs. Megan Gunnar and Michael Georgieff at the University of Minnesota's (UMN) Institute of Child Development to integrate measures of stress physiology and nutritional adversity. I chose the program because of the mentorship: though few researchers examine both stress and nutrition, they saw my vision and gave me the resources I need to pursue my scientific interests without reservation.
My time in grad school was also busy with life! My partner and I married, purchased our first home, and I gave birth to our daughter the fall of my 5th year of my PhD program. As an “older” student, I knew that graduate school was a time in my life where I would have the support to start our family and still keep on top of my research goals.
This did require a lot of research project/paper planning to create my productivity and publishing “runway” to give birth and have maternity leave. The COVID-19 pandemic coincided with my first year of parenthood and the nation-wide shut downs (therefore, no childcare) coincided with my first few months back from maternity leave and the months I had planned to finish my dissertation. At the time, it felt like I wasn’t doing the caliber of work that I thought I was capable of, but despite it all my dissertation received an award from one of my field’s professional societies. Though there has been a lot to celebrate, there has been a lot to grieve in graduating during COVID-19 as well: I had dreams of being surrounded by family and friends at my defense and dreams of my PhD advisor hooding me at the graduation ceremony.
The birth of my daughter also put my work into perspective both from a time limit perspective and from an impact perspective. Becoming a parent forced me to prioritize what really mattered to me professionally and put my time into the projects that I cared about most - it became much easier to say no to projects I was lukewarm about.
It also put all of my developmental psychology knowledge into practice in a very real way! I am incredibly privileged to have a spouse that is supportive in caregiving, emotionally, and financially - I am constantly aware of this privilege as a woman in academia, where most casual acquaintances are shocked to learn that my husband’s career moves have been dictated by my career trajectory rather than the other way around. I am also so privileged to be mentored and surrounded by others in academia who have awe-inspiring research careers and loving relationships in their personal lives. Their example has made it easier for me to see how I can create my own recipe for a fulfilling life and career.