Richard Weissbourd

Who is Richard Weissbourd?

Richard Weissbourd is an American child and family psychologist on the faculty of Harvard's School of Education and Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on children's moral development, on vulnerability and resilience in childhood, and on effective schools and services for children. His writings on these subjects have appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The New Republic.

Weissbourd is the author of The Parents We Mean To Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine the Moral and Emotional Development of Children, and The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America's Children and What We Can Do About It,.

For six years Weissbourd worked as a psychologist in community mental health centers as well as on the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s New Futures Project, an effort to prevent children from dropping out of school. He is a founder of several interventions for at-risk students including ReadBoston and WriteBoston, city-wide literacy initiatives led by Mayor Thomas Menino. With Robert Selman, he founded ProjectASPIRE, a social and ethical development intervention.