Meet the Team

Dr. Milyavskaya is an associate professor of Psychology at Carleton University. She received her PhD from McGill University and completed a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto before joining the faculty at Carleton University. Marina is fascinated by how people set and pursue goals in a multitude of domains throughout their daily lives. Her multi-method approach to studying self-regulation includes experimental, prospective, and experience-sampling studies, as well as a focus on idiosyncratic personal goals. She especially enjoys finding (and using) novel methodological and statistical ways to empirically examine questions related to goal pursuit, self-regulation, and well-being. View Marina’s CV

Tyler Thorne is a PhD student in social-personality psychology researching goal pursuit, self-regulation, psychophysiology, and well-being. His recent work focuses on student self-talk, how it is deployed in real time during academic tasks, and how it relates to performance, goal pursuit, and well-being. Tyler also collaborates with and consults for industry partners, building psychologically sound workplace assessments or running studies to answer key questions about their own workplaces, spanning topics such as personality, workplace culture, leadership empathy, and Artificial Intelligence. View Tyler’s full profile.

Mike Sullivan is a PhD student in psychology at Carleton University. In one stream of research, he explores the intersection between personality and long-term goal pursuit, including whether pursuing goals that are a good match for one’s personality is beneficial for goal attainment and well-being. In another, he investigates psychological mechanisms that may explain the association between effort and meaning. View Mike’s full profile.

Rebecca McGee Woods is an M.A. student in Psychology at Carleton University. Her research focuses on how ADHD symptoms influence goal pursuit and well-being, with particular interests in procrastination, emotion dysregulation, and perfectionism. Rebecca hopes to pursue a concentration in Mental Health and Well-Being.

Current: Methodologist at The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute

Gail McMillan completed a postdoctoral position studying self-regulation, goal pursuit, and health.

Current: Banting Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Toronto

Kaitlyn M. Werner completed her PhD in Social, Personality, and Health Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Marina Milyavskaya. Broadly speaking, her research examines the antecedents and underlying mechanisms that facilitate successful goal pursuit. Continuing into her postdoctoral work, Kaitlyn also examines the motivational mechanisms of self-control, specifically focusing on how “want-to” and “have-to” motivation influence goal-related decisions in-the-moment (e.g., amount of conflict experienced, what strategies people use, etc.) View Kaitlyn’s full profile