Research Interests: child and family wellbeing, child maltreatment prevention, child development, financial wellbeing, family process, disadvantaged neighborhood, policy effects on child wellbeing
Previous Education
MSW Ohio State University
BA (Economics) Ewha Womans University
Prior to joining the PhD program, Yoonzie was an assistant manager at SK Energy (the leading oil company in Korea) in Korea for 6 years. As a project leader for SK Energy’s donation program (“Sharing Books for Love”) targeting 4,000 after-school Community Child Centers for children from low-income household, Yoonzie was responsible for planning and delivering basic goods such as books, clothes, heating oil, etc. to help their families. Total funding for the program amounted to 5 million dollars, secured by a three-way memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW), the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), and SK Energy. The experience showed her how poverty could subject children to severe neglect, however unintentional. Also, Yoonzie worked with recipients of the Korean government’s flagship poverty program, the Basic Livelihood Security Program. Everyone was declared fit to work, in fact many were in poor health, both physically and mentally. From repeated first-hand contacts with these families, Yoonzie thought that the mental impact of poverty on families, specifically children, could be lasting and many families felt stuck in “dead-end” jobs and depressions made it hard for them to break free of the poverty trap.
Through her PhD studies, she hopes to find ways to prevent child maltreatment and enhance financial wellbeing, help families access community-centered resources and social capital, and explore the effects of social policies (TANF, SNAP, and EITC) on child wellbeing.