I spent more than a decade as a practitioner before I ever became a researcher. Working in community health and youth development, on projects ranging from HIV prevention to dating violence, I sat with young people, families, and the people trying to help them. I learned to listen closely to what was happening in their lives, and what it took to make a difference.

I also felt a gap that I couldn’t stop noticing. Researchers were learning important things, but that knowledge rarely reached the people doing the hardest work: counselors, teachers, nurses, youth workers, and families at the kitchen table. And research often missed what those of us on the ground already knew.

That gap is what eventually drew me into research, and it became my life’s work. Over the years I’ve come to believe that real understanding needs three kinds of knowing. People with lived experience know what it actually feels like and what actually helps. Practitioners know what works in a real classroom, clinic, or home on a hard day. And science offers the wider view, the patterns we can only see when we step back and look across thousands of lives. Each is incomplete on its own. Together, they can change things.

In 2004, I founded the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery (CRPSIR) at the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research — one of the first programs in the world dedicated specifically to understanding non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents and young adults. What began as a small research initiative grew into a globally recognized program, producing over 75 peer-reviewed publications, developing validated assessment tools, and creating educational resources now used by families, clinicians, and educators worldwide.

In 2006, I convened the first meeting of what would become the International Society for the Study of Self-Injury (ISSS), serving as its founding president and watching it grow into the premier global organization advancing NSSI research, practice, and policy across more than 20 countries.

My academic home was Cornell University for nearly two decades, first as a Senior Lecturer in Human Development, then as Research Scientist and Associate Director at the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, and now as Emerita Research Scientist. My driving question was always “what does this mean for the person sitting across from a struggling young person right now?”

Self-injury is the work I’m best known for, but it has always been part of a larger question: how do young people grow through difficulty, and what helps them thrive? My research has spanned connectedness and belonging, technology and social media, peer influence, climate anxiety, and suicide prevention. Running through all of it is a belief that struggle is a normal part of development, and that with the right support, painful experiences can become a source of resilience, wisdom, and compassion for others.

In 2019, I founded Whitlock Consulting to bring that work directly to the schools, clinics, nonprofits, and agencies supporting young people. I’ve since partnered with more than 30 organizations, building protocols, training staff, and creating resources tailored to each setting.

The longer I’ve worked in this field, the more convinced I’ve become that supporting young people well takes more than clinical technique. It takes adults who are genuinely curious about human experience, and who understand that self-injury, like so many forms of suffering, is often a way of saying something that hasn’t yet found words.

My approach is strength-based, trauma-informed, and grounded in relationships. I believe healing happens in connection, and that the adults supporting young people need care too. Much of my thinking is shaped by time in the natural world, which reminds me that growth is rarely linear and that things often regenerate after hard seasons.