Tamara Hamai, PhD, is an applied developmental psychologist and owner of Hamai Consulting, which provides support to nonprofits serving children and their families. Hamai Consulting helps nonprofits to secure funders and donors, increase long-term organizational stability, better understand what is and isn't working to quickly adapt to better serve children, and more quickly and easily meet evaluation and reporting requirements.
Through her work at Hamai Consulting, Hamai is involved in the lives of many trauma-exposed youth. For example, some of her clients include child welfare organizations, foster care support programs, and child maltreatment prevention programs. Currently she is working with one agency to conduct surveys on people’s views of foster youth. The ultimate goal of this work is to create awareness and educational campaigns to reduce the stigma of foster care involvement. She is also working with organizations to reduce the occurrence of child maltreatment.
Specifically, she is evaluating prevention programs to learn whether and how certain family services, such as parent support and education, reduce the rates of child maltreatment as parents learn more effective and adaptive ways to cope with daily stressors and interact in healthier ways with their children.
Hamai has been dedicated to improving the lives of children and their families for over 15 years. After receiving her BA in psychology from the University of Puget Sound, she enrolled in the applied developmental psychology doctorate program at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). While at CGU, she first investigated the development of emotion regulation and emotion displays, particularly how these emotional capacities are impacted by physical punishment in families. She then transitioned for her dissertation to apply geographic analysis methods to examine the relation between risk factors and maltreatment incidence, with the overarching goal of improving prediction of maltreatment by reducing error and improving how we think about and model the path to maltreatment. Throughout graduate school, Hamai also worked as a program evaluation consultant and adjunct instructor. In fact, although Hamai completed her PhD in 2015, she began her consulting firm in 2008 with the aim of applying research findings to improve intervention and implementation efforts.
When asked what career advice she would give to ECPs, Hamai said that exploring the world outside academia is worthwhile. There are so many ways that ECPs can apply their skill sets and can be excited and passionate about their work, but ECPs need to think outside the box. In an increasingly complex and changing world, there is a reason that young people are starting their own businesses and forging their own paths. Psychologists and academics in general have been slower and a bit more resistant to change their career trajectories and move away from the academic path. Hamai encourages ECPs to stop and think, “what would my ideal life/job be?” and, “if I had all the money in the world, what would I do to tackle this problem?” Hamai strongly believes that deep innovation and creative opportunities are needed to change the ways that we serve children and their families, particularly those affected by violence and trauma.
Hamai also notes that there are ways in the for-profit world to make a living and still make a meaningful impact. She reflects that during her education she did not receive examples in the fields of child maltreatment or family violence beyond academia or nonprofits, in large part she believes because faculty members did not have experience outside of these realms. Therefore, Hamai insists that it is up to the current generation to forge new paths toward helping children and their families to thrive. Forging a new path is not without incredible challenges and obstacles, though. As Hamai notes, it is difficult to get paid to do the work that we do in the field of child maltreatment. Child maltreatment researchers and clinicians deal with something that people wish did not exist and therefore tend to want to ignore. Unfortunately, it often takes a horrific event to bring child maltreatment issues to the forefront.
Ultimately, we face the challenge of bringing scientific rigor to a morally challenging, tragic situation that is incredibly difficult to measure. However, Hamai continues to find meaning and motivation in her work. She feels strongly that all children should have an equal chance to grow up and thrive. As such, she works daily to ensure that she does her part to improve the lives of children and the families that raise them.
In addition to her work at Hamai Consulting, Hamai is also actively involved in child maltreatment organizations. For example, she currently serves on the board of the National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence. As part of her board position, Hamai participates on the research action team and attends an annual summit to share research findings on family violence, including issues related to child maltreatment. She is also currently writing a grant to fund research related to school safety. The grant would address how prepared schools are to address the safety issues confronting their students, including issues such as school shootings, but also concerns such as maltreatment exposure.
Hamai has already made remarkable contributions to the field of child maltreatment via program evaluation and consulting. She is passionate about her work and has improved the lives of many vulnerable youth. We wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors and thank her for her insights to our students and ECPs.