Deborah Phillips, Ph.D.

• Professor of Psychology and Associated Faculty, Public Policy Institute, Georgetown University

• Co-Director, Research Center on Children in the U.S., Georgetown University

Deborah Phillips, Ph.D., is currently Professor of Psychology and Associated Faculty in the Public Policy Institute at Georgetown University. She is also Co-Director of the University’s Research Center on Children in the U.S.

Prior to this, she was the first Executive Director of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council's Commission on Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. She also co-edited From Neurons to Neighborhoods: the Science of Early Child Development.

Her research focuses on the developmental effects of early childhood programs, including both child care and pre-K settings. Current studies focus on how children who differ in temperament are differentially affected by child care experiences and on an evaluation of the Tulsa Oklahoma pre-K program as it affects both cognitive and social-emotional development.

Dr. Phillips has served as a Congressional Science Fellow of the Society for Research in Child Development, a mid-career fellow at Yale University's Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy, and Director of the Child Care Information Service of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. She has served on numerous task forces and advisory groups, including the Carnegie Corporation’s Task Force on Meeting the Needs of Young Children and the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Phillips is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society.