A sociologist and happiness expert at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, Christine Carter, PhD is the author of Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents. Dr. Carter also writes an award-winning blog for Greater Good, which is syndicated on the Huffington Post and PsychologyToday.com. Carter has helped thousands of parents find more joy in their parenting while raising happy, successful and resilient kids. Known for her parenting and relationship advice, Carter draws on psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and uses her own chaotic and often hilarious real-world adventures to demonstrate the do’s and don’ts in action.

After receiving her B.A. from Dartmouth College, where she was a Senior Fellow, Dr. Carter worked in marketing management and school administration, going on to receive her PhD. in sociology from UC Berkeley. Dr. Carter has been quoted in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and dozens of other publications. She has appeared on the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” the “TODAY” show, the “Rachael Ray Morning Show,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” and NPR.

Carter has been a keynote speaker at hundreds of events and professional groups. In 2010, she received an award from the Council on Contemporary Families for her outstanding science-based reporting on family issues. In 2011 she won Red Tricycle’s award for the “Most Awesome Parent Education,” and so far in 2012 she has been nominated for a Bammy Award and for an award from the American Sociological Association for public sociology.

Dr. Carter teaches parenting classes online throughout the year to a global audience on raisinghappiness.com. She lives with her family in Berkeley, CA.

Dr. Robert Brooks is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.  He has lectured nationally and internationally and written extensively about the themes of resilience, parenting, family relationships, school climate, and balancing our personal and professional lives. He is the author or co-author of 15 books and has also appeared in several videos pertaining to helping children to become more responsible, self-disciplined, hopeful, and resilient.

Rona Renner has been a Registered Nurse for 46 years with a wide range of experience in health care. In the last 20 years she has focused her attention on pediatrics, parent education and advocacy, ADHD and learning differences. In 1992, she was trained by Kaiser Permanente Medical Center as a temperament counselor to help parents understand their child's behavior, and she co-wrote the temperament based parenting class manual. In 2002, she founded Childhood Matters, a non-profit organization producing radio shows in English and Spanish. "Nurse Rona" hosted a weekly call-in radio show for over nine years, and has appeared on many television shows, including CNN and 20/20. Rona is the author of Is That Me Yelling, a book aimed to help parents learn how to effectively communicate with their kids by focusing on their child's unique temperament, and their own. She loves working with parents one-on-one, in groups, or in large workshops. Rona is happily married, has four adult children, and two grandsons.

Dr. David Palmiter is a professor of Psychology and Counseling at Marywood University. He is a practicing and board-certified clinical psychologist, a past president of the Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the author of over three dozen publications, including two books on promoting resilience in youth, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (true of < 6% of psychologists), the American Academy of Clinical Psychology and the Pennsylvania Psychological Association in youth. He has also given hundreds of workshops on family issues for organizations such as The Navy SEAL Foundation, The Master Therapist Series at the University of Connecticut, The American Psychological Association and the McGraw-Hill Financial Group and completed hundreds of media projects for outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, US News and World Report and the Wall Street Journal. David is also a dad of three (two studying at Cornell University and one still in high school) and husband of 27 years to Dr. Lia Richards-Palmiter. A central aspect of his professional mission is to put air under the wings of parents as they try to raise happy and resilient children and teens.

Dr. Lee Hausner is an internationally recognized clinical psychologist, business consultant and family wealth advisor. She served as the senior psychologist for the Beverly Hills Unified School District for 19 years. She is currently the Senior Managing Director for First Foundation Advisors. An acknowledged expert on psychological issues involving wealth and wealth transfer, she was a presenter at the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, and is a frequent participant at the high wealth/private client conferences for major financial institutions. She is a frequent guest on national radio and television and a quoted expert in national publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Times, Forbes, Fortune, Privilege, Town and Country and Worth Magazine.

Dr. Hausner is the co-author with Doug Freeman of A Founder's Guide to the Family Foundation, published by the Council on Foundations and is the author of the seminal work regarding wealth and the family; Children of Paradise: Successful Parenting for Prosperous Families. In addition, Dr. Hausner incorporated her unique six-step transition model for succession in family business in the critically acclaimed family business resource book Hats Off to You 2: Balancing Roles and Creating Success in Family Business, of which she was a co-author.

Dr. Hausner is a graduate of Northwestern University (BA, Psychology), San Francisco State University (MA, Psychology), and Kensington University (PhD, Psychology).

Rabbi Sherre Hirsch is a mother of four, author, speaker, TV personality, teacher and the spiritual life consultant for Canyon Ranch.  After eight years at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, she stepped out from behind the formal podium to share her message in all kinds of pulpits from The Today Show to a small baptist church in Alabama.  She published her first book, We Plan, God Laughs: What to Do When Life Hits You Over the Head in 2008; her second book will be published in early 2013. Rabbi Hirsch spends her free time practicing yoga, baking brownies and playing freeze dance with her husband and children.

Madeline Levine, PhD, is a psychologist with close to 30 years of experience as a clinician, consultant and educator. Her New York Times bestseller, The Price of Privilege, explores the reasons why teenagers from affluent families are experiencing epidemic rates of emotional problems.  Her book, Teach Your Children Well, outlines how our current narrow definition of success unnecessarily stresses academically talented kids and marginalizes many more whose talents and interests are less amenable to measurement. The development of skills needed to be successful in the 21^st century- creativity, collaboration, innovation – are not easily developed in our competitive, fast-paced, high pressure world. Teach Your Children Well gives practical, research- based solutions to help parents return their families to healthier and saner versions of themselves.

Dr. Levine is also a co-founder of Challenge Success, a project born at the Stanford School of Education. Challenge Success believes that our increasingly competitive world has led to tremendous anxiety about our children’s’ futures and has resulted in a high pressure, myopic focus on grades, test scores and performance. This kind of pressure and narrow focus isn’t helping our kids become the resilient, capable, meaningful contributors we need in the 21st century. So every day, Challenge Success provides families and schools with the practical research-based tools they need to raise healthy, motivated kids, capable of reaching their full potential. We know that success is measured over the course of a lifetime, not at the end of the grading period.

Dr. Levine began her career as an elementary and junior high school teacher in the South Bronx of New York before moving to California and earning her degrees in psychology. She has had a large clinical practice with an emphasis on child and adolescent problems and parenting issues. Currently however, she spends most of her time crisscrossing the country speaking to parents, educators, students, and business leaders. Dr. Levine has taught Child Development classes to graduate students at the University of California Medical Center/ San Francisco. For many years, Dr. Levine has been a consultant to various schools, from preschool through High School, public as well as private, throughout the country. She has been featured on television programs from the Early Show to the Lehrer report, on NPR stations such as Diane Rheems in Washington and positively reviewed in publications from Scientific American to the Washington Post. She is sought out both nationally and internationally as an expert and keynote speaker. 

Dr. Levine and her husband of 35 years, Lee Schwartz, MD are the incredibly proud (and slightly relieved) parents of three newly minted and thriving sons.

Harry Harrison is the New York Times best-selling author of some of the most well known parenting books in the world.  He has appeared on television shows across the country, been interviewed on over 50 national radio programs including NPR, and is a regular contributor to websites like Dr. Laura.com, Sheknows.com, parentingpink.com, storknet.com, and sharecare.com (a collaboration between Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil).

His books aren’t the normal narrative read, but concise, sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant chunks of inspiration and advice that parents read and reread over again. He has also written two eBooks directed towards college students to guide and motivate them to earn a college degree.  Mr. Harrison and his wife, Melissa, have raised two incredible sons.

Denise Pope, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education. For the past 13 years, she has specialized in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. She is co-founder of Challenge Success, a research and intervention project that aims to reduce unhealthy pressure on youth and champions a broader vision of youth success. Challenge Success is an expanded version of the SOS: Stressed-Out Students project that Dr. Pope founded and directed from 2003-2008. She lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. Her book, Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students was awarded Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal, 2001. Dr. Pope is a three time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award.  Prior to teaching at Stanford, Dr. Pope taught high school English in Fremont, CA and college composition and rhetoric courses at Santa Clara University. She lives in Los Altos, CA with her husband and three children.

Dr. Laura Markham is the author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting. She earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University and has worked as a parenting coach with countless parents across the English-speaking world, both in person and via phone. You can find Dr. Laura online at AhaParenting.com, the website of Aha! Moments for parents of kids from birth through the teen years, where you can sign up for her free daily inspiration email.  Dr. Laura lives in New York with her husband and her kids, who are now 17 and 21.

Michael J. Bradley, EdD, award-winning author, has counseled adolescents and their parents for over 30 years and currently has a private practice in suburban Philadelphia. As a recognized specialist in adolescent behavior and parenting, Dr. Bradley is in demand as a speaker and facilitator for mental health professionals, educators, and parenting groups. He has appeared on over 400 radio and television shows, including CNN, The Today Show and Good Morning, America, and has been interviewed by numerous magazines and newspapers such as USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Parents Magazine. His website forum is a great source of advice and encouragement to parents.