Elissa Kozlov grew up in Westchester County, New York, where she spent much of her high school and college years immersed in theater. She found herself repeatedly cast as older adult characters—which was confusing for a teenager but which that sparked a lasting appreciation for aging. Elissa found herself unusually invested in understanding these roles, working hard to capture the emotional texture and lived experience of aging long before she had the language to describe what drew her in. Around the same time, she volunteered in nursing homes and assisted living facilities throughout high school and college, where she became increasingly convinced that, as a society, we had not yet figured out how to support quality of life in later life. It felt like a problem worth thinking about indefinitely.

Although she had always been drawn to psychology, it was a freshman-year course on aging and biology at Wesleyan University that crystallized her interest in the intersection of psychological science and aging. A class video on aging in America included a segment on the “greying” of U.S. prisons, and Elissa found herself unable to shake questions about what it meant to grow old behind bars. That curiosity became the foundation of her senior thesis, in which she interviewed older adults who had aged while incarcerated to better understand the psychological and social dimensions of later life in prison. The project deepened her commitment to studying aging at the margins of health and social systems.

After college, Elissa sought hands-on experience at the intersection of aging and mental health, working at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry. There, she fell in love with clinical work with older adults and became increasingly certain that her future lay in geriatric mental health. She went on to pursue a PhD in Clinical and Aging and Developmental Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, a decision she describes as one she has “never looked back” on. At WashU, her mentor Brian Carpenter played a formative role in encouraging her to engage more deeply with serious illness, death, and dying, an area Elissa initially approached with some apprehension. With steady mentorship and support, that discomfort transformed into purpose. During her first practicum placement with the St. Louis VA Palliative Care team, she realized that she had found her professional home.

Following her doctoral training, Elissa completed a clinical internship in geropsychology at the VA Palo Alto and a T32 postdoctoral fellowship in Behavioral Geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine. These experiences helped her develop a stronger research narrative which ultimately lead her to Rutgers University’s School of Public Health where she is now an Assistant Professor and Director of the Population Aging concentration. While she maintains a small private practice, her primary role at Rutgers centers on research, with additional efforts devoted to teaching, administration, and mentorship.

Elissa’s research focuses on improving outcomes for older adults and adults with serious, life-limiting illness through innovative, often technology-enabled interventions, and on increasing awareness of and access to end-of-life care, including psychotherapy, palliative care, hospice, and medical aid in dying. Her work is supported by funding from the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Mental Health and reflects a longstanding commitment to translating psychological science into more humane and equitable care at the end of life.

Now based in Maplewood, New Jersey, Elissa lives with her husband, their two children, and a very good dog named Judy. Outside of work, she plays basketball, coaches her kids’ sports teams, directs the occasional children’s theater productions, and hikes whenever she can. The throughline from her early days portraying older characters on stage to her current work in geriatric mental health and palliative care is clear: a sustained curiosity about aging, dignity, and how people live well, even, and especially, at life’s edges.