Niruban Balachandran, M.P.A.

Project Co-Leader

Niruban Balachandran is the Director of the Professional Development Program at the East-West Center. Previously, he served in the World Bank from 2013 to 2021, and his career has spanned more than 18 years in psychological science, education, and international development around the globe.

Mr. Balachandran was a winner of the World Bank's Innovation Challenge Prize, the Bradley M. Bloom Impact Award, and the International Society for Human Ethology's Linda Mealey Award. He is widely published in scholarly journals and print media, and is a frequently-invited speaker at international conferences. He is a Master of Public Administration (MPA) graduate of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and member of the Harvard Behavioral Insights Group, as well as a Bachelor of psychology graduate from Rutgers. In November 2019, he was honored by the New America Foundation as a Next Generation Leader.

Daniel J. Glass, Ph.D.

Project Co-Leader

Daniel Glass is a licensed clinical psychologist and evolutionary behavioral science researcher. Dr. Glass has published seventeen peer-reviewed scholarly articles in the fields of psychology, medicine, and evolutionary studies on subjects ranging from human emotions to peer bullying/victimization to Alzheimer’s disease. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Suffolk University and is currently a psychotherapist working with children, adolescents, and young adults at a private practice in Connecticut.

Dr. Glass has taught a number of college psychology courses, including evolution and behavior courses and has published papers in the field of evolution pedagogy. He is the former co-editor of the EvoS Journal, the official journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium, and current president of the Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society (AEPS), a nonprofit dedicated to bridging the gap between evolutionary behavioral science research and applied domains of human endeavor.

Katrina Hercules

Director of Strategy

Katrina Hercules, an MBA candidate at UCLA Anderson School of Management, is a brand strategist and owner of the business consultancy Outsiders Branding. She has worked with companies of all kinds, approachingbrand strategy from many different angles, including advertising, design, web development, productdevelopment, event promotion, and general strategic planning. Her clients have included global leaders such as Honda, Youtube, and Nestlé, as well as up-and-coming small businesses and organizations around the country.

Olivia Jewell, Ph.D.

Senior Project Manager

Olivia is a Teaching Associate at the University of Nottingham. She has taught classes across fields in psychology including cognitive, developmental, social, and research methods. Dr. Jewell's research focuses on the evolutionary basis for music and its function as a source of powerful and quick group bonding. She earned her Ph.D. from Goldsmiths University London and has presented her research at conferences such as the Human Behavior and Evolution Society and the Northeastern Evolutionary Psychology Conference.

Melanie MacEacheron, Ph.D., LL.B.

Director of Social Media Outreach

Melanie MacEacheron is an Assistant Teaching Professor with Arizona State University teaching, primarily, statistics and research method to psychology students. She has previously taught a broad range of psychology courses. She is a Review Editor for Frontiers (Evolutionary Psychology). She formerly practiced law, primarily within the role of Legal Researcher and Writer.

She is the (co-)author of over 20 publications. These are in the areas of social and evolutionary psychology, and forensic psychology. Her research currently focusses on women's psychology as mothers, and average, psychological sex differences in mateships. Her research methods include experimentation, quasi-experimentation, economic game-play, and surveying, as well as qualitative analysis, and in-person, on-line, and large-scale archival research. She has also conducted comparative legal analysis to add context to psychological publications.