Mona Abo-Zena

director, Al Huda and Islamic Academy

Mona Abo-Zena, a former public school teacher and principal of the Islamic Academy of New England, is a doctoral student in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. Her primary research interests include religious and identity development, family and community contexts, and immigrant and other multicultural individuals and communities. In addition to her work as a research assistant on the John Templeton Foundation study of religion and positive youth development, Mona works on the Adoption & Development Project (ADP) at Tufts. The ADP project studies how children adopted from China understand aspects of adoption and their identity, and how their families address adoption and ethnicity as a family. Mona earned her BA in sociology from the University of Chicago and her EdM from Harvard University. She has over 10 years of teaching and administrative experience in public and Islamic schools, and serves on several boards that serve children and families.