Maryna Vashchenko is a doctoral student at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University and is a native of Ukraine. Since beginning her graduate education at Boston University as a Fulbright scholar in 2003, she has worked in several research and applied settings in both America and Ukraine, learning about ways to maximize the potential of children at-risk to develop positively. Maryna is an Adjunct faculty member at Northeastern University and Petro Mohyla State University in Ukraine. Her research interest lies in coping with parenting and caregiving stress, interventions that promote positive child development through training and development of caregivers in challenging contexts, caregiving relationships and attachment, child-rearing in institutions, and adoption. As a recipient of the Tisch Active Citizen 2007 Summer Program Award, Maryna worked with students of a local university in Ukraine to establish a community program called The Big Sister Program. During the summer of 2007 she also collected survey and observational data in three orphanages in Ukraine, which describe the knowledge, beliefs and practices of orphanage caregivers.