Dr. Gaylord-Harden is a clinical psychologist and the Director of the Youth Rising Lab at Rice University. Dr. Gaylord-Harden's research focuses on the impact of community violence exposure and traumatic loss on mental health outcomes in Black adolescents and families in disinvested, urban communities. She has also examined the role of modifiable protective factors, such as future orientation, coping strategies, and parent-child relationships, that buffer the effects of traumatic stress. She and her team seek to address disparities in community violence exposure and traumatic loss and to minimize the adverse effects of violence exposure by enhancing existing strengths and assets embedded in Black youth, families, and communities. She has published several peer-reviewed research articles and presented numerous scientific conference presentations on these topics, and her team aims to utilize findings from this research to develop and implement interventions that promote healing for Black adolescents and families affected by community violence. 

Dr. Gaylord-Harden is a Member of the Black and Brown Gun Violence Prevention Research Collective. She is also a Council Member for the International Society for Research on Aggression, a former member of the Executive Council of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. She has received funding from the Fund for a Safer Future, The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the American Psychological Association, and the Department of Education for her research efforts.