About

Join MBB in welcoming Mikel Jollett, frontman for the band The Airborne Toxic Event, author of Hollywood Park, and Stanford graduate, for a special conversation with Charles A. Nelson III, Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Education at Harvard University.

With his sharp wit and extraordinary vulnerability, Mikel Jollett, will recount his remarkable journey from a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse to finding his voice as a writer and musician. Following Jollett’s introduction, Dr. Nelson, a pioneer in the study of adversity and development, will engage him in a conversation about the vast range of individual differences in how humans respond to harmful early life events. 

Mikel Jollett is frontman for The Airborne Toxic Event and author of New York Times bestselling memoir, Hollywood Park. In his memoir, Mikel Jollett details his childhood born in an infamous cult, then raised in an orphanage. He and his mother eventually escape to a life steeped in poverty, abuse, violence, alcoholism, and drug addiction. Music is his only solace on many nights. Jollett eventually reconnects with his ex-con, recovering heroin addict father and goes on against the odds to get a full scholarship to Stanford University.

Charles A. Nelson III, PhD, is Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Education in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Richard David Scott Chair in Pediatric Developmental Medicine Research at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Director of Research in the Division of Developmental Medicine. His research centers on developmental cognitive neuroscience, including the development of social perception, developmental trajectories to autism, and the effects of early adversity on brain and behavioral development. Among his many honors are the Leon Eisenberg Award (Harvard Medical School), an honorary doctorate (Bucharest University, Romania), the Ruane Prize for Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Research, the Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development Award, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academic of Medicine, and the British Academy.

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