Tovah P. Klein, Ph.D., author of Raising Resilience and Director of the Barnard College Toddler Center and Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychology, will be the Keynote Speaker at the upcoming. WJCS Samuel Kahn Memorial Lecture. The lecture will take place on Wednesday May 14 from 1:30-2:30 pm via Zoom.
Dr. Klein will focus on raising resilient children in an age of uncertainty. She will discuss how research on trauma and its impact on emotional and intellectual development, including her own findings, can help parents offset and even avoid damage that could derail their children’s future. The stressors and traumas could include peer conflicts, divorce, moving, academic struggles, and larger national events. Parents can learn to instill in their children the emotional intelligence, cognitive flexibility, and social know-how they need to manage life’s challenges, build the resources to bounce back, and create a lasting capacity for happiness.
ABOUT TOVA KLEIN
A Psychology Professor at Barnard College since 1995 with a doctorate in psychology from Duke University, Klein’s research aims to understand children’s social and emotional development, parental influences on children’s development, and parents’ experiences raising children, including the challenges of combining work and family and being a parent during the pandemic. She has studied the effects of large-scale traumatic events, such as witnessing the attacks of 9/11 and the Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011. She integrates her work in child development and parenting challenges with her work on trauma to understand how to best support parents to raise healthy, grounded and resilient children. She has taken this message to TV, radio, podcasts and live audiences worldwide.
Klein is a sought after speaker and advisor to programs worldwide, including Room to Grow, Ubuntu Pathways S. Africa, Children’s Museum of Manhattan, and Hunts Point Alliance for Children; she is an advisor to children’s media including National Geographic Kids, HBO and Apple TV+. She has appeared on TV including Good Morning America, Good Day NY, Today, CNN, and MSNBC, as well as being quoted widely in national publications and online including NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Parents Magazine, CNBC, Huffington Post, Motherly, and more. Dr. Klein is the author of two books, translated into eight languages, Raising Resilience: How to help our children thrive in times of uncertainty (HarperCollins, 2024) and How Toddlers Thrive: What parents can do today to plant the seeds of lifelong success (Simon & Schuster, 2014). She is the mother of three children.
