Richard Weissbourd

Richard Weissbourd is a psychologist, a lecturer at Harvard, and the Faculty Director of Making Caring Common, a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He teaches at both the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he directs the Human Development and Psychology Program, and at the Harvard Kennedy School. His current work focuses on children’s moral and ethical development, how parents can raise more caring children, and how adults can mentor teenagers and young adults to develop ethical and mature romantic relationships. Rick has written for numerous scholarly and popular publications and blogs, including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, CNN, The New Republic, NPR, and Psychology Today. He has consulted to schools and organizations around the country and has advised on family policy and school reform at the city, state, and federal levels. He is the author of The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development (Houghton Mifflin 2009), which was named one of the top 24 books of 2009 by The New Yorker, and of The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America’s Children and What We Can Do About It (Addison-Wesley, 1996), named as one of the top 10 education books of all time by the American School Board Journal. He is a founder of several interventions for at-risk children, including Project ASPIRE, ReadBoston, and WriteBoston, and is also a founder of the Lee Academy pilot school in Boston. He holds a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.