Dr. Frank Kessel is a senior fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy and professor of early childhood multicultural education at the University of New Mexico. Prior to joining UNM in the fall of 2005, Kessel served for twelve years as program director for the Culture, Health and Human Development Program at the Social Science Research Council (in New York). There he helped bring to fruition the collective work of a variety of interdisciplinary, sometimes international, groups of scholars.
Dr. Frank Kessel is a senior fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy and professor of early childhood multicultural education at the University of New Mexico. Prior to joining UNM in the fall of 2005, Kessel served for twelve years as program director for the Culture, Health and Human Development Program at the Social Science Research Council (in New York). There he helped bring to fruition the collective work of a variety of interdisciplinary, sometimes international, groups of scholars. Also responsible for SSRC initiatives at the intersection of the social, psychological, and biomedical sciences, he has consulted with Canadian groups engaged in interdisciplinary research on health and, more recently, advised the National Cancer Institute on its “Science of Team Science” initiative.
With a primary interest in human development and related issues in the philosophy and history of psychology and the social sciences, Kessel has held academic positions at the University of Houston, the University of Alberta, and the University of Cape Town. He has also been involved in international early education efforts, first as research director of the Early Learning Centre in Cape Town and then as scientific associate at the Bernard van Leer Foundation in The Hague. His further connection to the philanthropy sector came as senior program associate at the William T. Grant Foundation in New York.
A fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, Kessel received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and his M.A. at the University of Cape Town.
