Please join UCLA’s Friends of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital Board of Advisors for an Open Mind program with Ellen Galinsky, author of the paradigm-shifting book, The Breakthrough Years – A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens.  In her new book, Ellen Galinsky, provides a science-based instruction manual for the adolescent brain that parents, educators, policymakers and teens themselves will benefit from reading and living by.  Dan Siegel, MD, award-winning educator, parenting expert and The New York Times best-selling author will join Ms. Galinsky in discussion.

 

The Breakthrough Years challenges assumptions about teenagers and offers new ways for parents to understand and interact with teens. The book offers a framework and mindset that can turn conflict into problem-solving opportunities, encourage positive risk-taking, and promote essential skills for success. The Breakthrough Years recasts adolescence as a time of possibility, offering new opportunities for connection between teens and adults.  It will help parents and those who work with teens to understand adolescence not as the “I hope we can get through these years” but as the breakthrough years that they truly can be.

 

Blending cutting-edge research with engaging storytelling, The Breakthrough Years is based on Galinsky’s nine years of research into the adolescent brain and behavior that included conducting original studies uniquely informed by the questions adolescents have about their own development.  The Breakthrough Years shows why our understanding of adolescence is out of step with the latest research—and how to correct it.

 

BIOS

Ellen Galinsky is the President of Families and Work Institute (FWI) and the elected President of the Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN). She also serves as senior research advisor to AASA, the School Superintendent Organization. Between March 2016 and September 2022, she was the Chief Science Officer of the Bezos Family Foundation. Before co-founding FWI, she spent more than two decades at the Bank Street College of Education. Over her career, her research has focused on work-life, children’s development, youth voice, child-care, parent-professional relationship, and parental development.

 

Ms. Galinsky is the author of Mind in the Making, a best-selling book on early learning that The New York Times called “an iconic parenting manual,” Her book on adolescence, The Breakthrough Years, that was published in March 2024 and has been hailed as a “masterpiece,” a “tour de force,” and “a singular contribution to science and society. Ms. Galinsky is also the author of 90 books/reports and 360 articles for books, academic journals, magazines, and the Web.  Other career highlights include serving as the elected President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, being elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, serving as parent expert in the Mister Rogers Talks with Parents series, and receiving a Distinguished Achievement Award from Vassar College as well as the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from WFRN.

 

Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.

Dr. Dan Siegel is the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute and founding Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, where he was also Co-Principal Investigator of the Center for Culture, Brain and Development and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine.

An award-winning educator, Dr. Siegel is the author of five New York Times bestsellers and over fifteen other books which have been translated into over forty languages. As the founding editor of the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), Dr. Siegel has overseen the publication of one hundred books in the transdisciplinary IPNB framework which focuses on the mind and mental health. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Siegel completed his postgraduate training at UCLA specializing in pediatrics, and adult, adolescent, and child psychiatry. He was trained in research and narrative analysis through a National Institute of Mental Health research training fellowship focusing on how relationships shape our autobiographical ways of making sense of our lives and influence our development across the lifespan. Learn more about Dr. Siegel at: www.drdansiegel.com | https://mindsightinstitute.com

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Yalda T. Uhls, PhD
Dr. Yalda T. Uhls is the founder and CEO of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) at UCLA, which is the only youth-centered organization to bridge the gap between social science research and media creation to help storytellers better reflect the lives of adolescents. She is an internationally recognized research scientist, educator, author, and expert on the science of media and adolescent development, the importance of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and the evolving nature of parenting. Dr. Uhls’ career bridges the worlds of entertainment and psychological research. She was a movie executive at MGM and Sony who earned an MBA and Ph.D. from UCLA. She now serves as an assistant adjunct professor at UCLA and is the author of Media Moms and Digital Dads: A Fact Not Fear Approach to Parenting in the Digital Age. She is also the proud daughter of Persian immigrants. Dr. Uhls’s expertise on how media content is created, along with the science of how media affects children, informs her unique perspective and is her inspiration for creating CSS. She is a highly-sought guest speaker on a multitude of topics and frequently speaks about the importance of Authentically Inclusive Representation (AIR) and Gen Z’s relationship with mental health and media at events hosted by prominent organizations and companies. Research conducted by Dr. Uhls has been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine, Good Morning America, USA Today, NPR and many others, and the White House has invited her twice to speak at youth-focused policy discussions. Since 2022, she has served on the NAACP Entertainment Advisory Council, and has been a member of YouTube’s kids and family council since its inception.