Impact of Civic Engagement on Exploration & Risk Taking

The third annual Adolescent Brain Development Symposium, hosted by the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent, convened policymakers, youth-serving organizations, young people, and researchers to talk about The Impact of Civic Engagement in Adolescence. The third discussion of the event explored the impact of civic engagement on exploration and risk taking in adolescence. Natasha Duell, PhD, Assistant Professor, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; LaJuan Allen, MPP, Director, Vote16USA, Generation Citizen; and Audrey Rothenberg, Vote16 Culver City, explained the importance of providing adolescents with opportunities to take positive risks and explore the world around them. Participant Bios: Natasha Duell is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Child Development at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She completed her NIH T32 and NSF postdoctoral fellowships at UNC-Chapel Hill and received her PhD from Temple University. Her research examines psychosocial, biological, and cultural influences of adolescent decision making. Over the past several years, her research has focused on exploring innovative approaches to understanding and promoting positive risk behaviors among adolescents. Ultimately, the goal of Natasha’s research is to identify contexts that maximize adolescents’ strengths to support adaptive decision making and positive developmental outcomes. LaJuan Allen currently serves as the Director of Vote16USA, where he oversees all aspects of the national campaign. He became the first person in his family to graduate from college, earning a bachelor of arts in political science/public policy and sociology from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in 2018. In May of 2022, he graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth with a master’s degree in public policy with a concentration in education policy. LaJuan began his career as the Community Relations Coordinator for Mayor Jorge O. Elorza in Providence, Rhode Island, and most recently served as Director of Policy & Partnerships. His portfolio included leading, implementing, and coordinating policy initiatives and high-quality, quick-turnaround research, and analysis in support of the mayor’s policy agenda. Audrey Rothenberg is a senior at Culver City High School and is interested in advocacy and community outreach. She has been working on the Vote16 Culver City campaign for four years and is the President of Vote16 at her school. She is also a founding member of One Step Ahead, a non-profit organization that aims to lower the socio-economic achievement gap in the Culver City Unified School District and works one-on-one with elementary students struggling with reading and math. She loves backpacking and listening to music in her spare time. Moderator Lydia Denworth is an award-winning science journalist. She is a contributing editor at Scientific American, where she writes the Science of Health column, and the author of Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond. Friendship was named one of the best leadership books of 2020 by Adam Grant and called “the best of science writing” by Booklist. She is also co-author, with Dana Suskind, of the New York Times bestseller Parent Nation, and has written two other books of popular science: I Can Hear You Whisper and Toxic Truth. Her work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, and many other publications.