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Rachel Best (she/her)
Rachel Best (she/her)
Research Assistant (2017-2020)
Rachel is a fifth-year doctoral student at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology’s Clinical Psychology (Health Emphasis) Ph.D. program in The Bronx, New York. Her research as an undergraduate in the PATH lab sparked her interest in gero-psychology, health psychology, and third-wave therapies. She has been able to pursue these interests through her research in Dr. Elizabeth Seng’s Headache and Adherence Lab as well as in clinical positions at Zucker Hillside Hospital, Jacobi Medical Center, Montefiore Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the Manhattan VA. For fun, she enjoys reading anything and everything, spending time with friends and family, and hiking when she can get out of NYC.
Isabella D'Ottone (she/her)
Isabella D'Ottone (she/her)
Research Assistant (2021 - 2023)
Isa graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with her B.A. in Psychology and French. As an undergraduate research assistant in the PATH Lab, Isa worked on researching relationships between Sense of Purpose and romantic attraction. Now, she works as a lab manager in the Miami Affective Neuroscience And Translational Experimental Enterprise (MANATEE) Lab at the University of Miami.
Kyrsten Hill (she/her)
Kyrsten Hill (she/her)
Post-Doctoral Research Associate (2023-2024)
Kyrsten was a postdoctoral researcher in the PATH Lab at WashU, and she is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She graduated with her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Alabama, with a concentration in Geropsychology. Broadly, Kyrsten’s research seeks to understand how stress impacts mental health and wellbeing across the adult lifespan. Her dissertation examined associations among perceived control, stressor reactivity, and age. Kyrsten moved to St. Louis in 2022 to complete her predoctoral internship at the VA St. Louis Healthcare System and has been enjoying exploring a new city. In her free time, Kyrsten enjoys playing board games with her family, doing DIY projects to renovate her home, and going for walks with her pit bull Moro (affectionately known as “Mr. Momo”).
Gabrielle Pfund (she/her)
Gabrielle Pfund (she/her)
PhD Student (2018-2022)
Dr. Pfund is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development & Family Science at Auburn University. During her time in the PATH lab, her research focused on the connection between sense of purpose and social relationships over the long-term and in daily life, the benefits of sense of purpose across the lifespan, and how to best measure sense of purpose. These endeavors set the foundation to start her own lab, the Purpose Functioning in Daily Life (PFiDL) lab, where her research will focus on how sense of purpose, activities, and social dynamics in daily life can help us understand changes in cognitive health as individuals age.
In her free time, she loves reading, petting dogs, admiring pretty buildings, cuddling dogs, spending time with her friends, playing with dogs, and scouting animal shelter websites in preparation of adopting a dog.
Payton Rule (she/her)
Payton Rule (she/her)
Thesis Student and Post-Baccalaureate Researcher (2020-2024)
Payton graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2022. During her undergraduate training, Payton completed an honors thesis examining the relationships between various psychosocial factors and components of well-being among adults with a neuromuscular disorder, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). This experience further sparked her interest in well-being, psychosocial functioning, resilience, and mental health, particularly among those with chronic illness/disability. She currently is a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at Washington University. In her free time, Payton enjoys playing adaptive soccer and spending time with her golden retriever, Whitt.
Megan Wolk (she/her)
Megan Wolk (she/her)
Graduate Student and Post-Doctoral Research Associate (2020-2025)
Megan was a graduate student and postdoctoral research associate in the PATH Lab. Her research centers around her broader goal of furthering issues related to diversity and inclusion. She is broadly interested in the relationship between discrimination and purpose in life, as well as identifying the personal and situational factors that lead an individual to engage in activism as their purpose in life. In addition, Megan’s research focuses on the relationships between discrimination, sense of purpose, and health, including how sense of purpose may serve as a tool to reduce health disparities. In her free time, she also enjoys spending time with family, friends, and her 2 cats, and watching scary movies.
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