
2025-26 ESDPA Speaker Series
About the 2025-26 Author, Jennifer B. Wallace
Jennifer B. Wallace is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose work explores the power of mattering in our everyday lives. Through research and storytelling, Wallace examines the hidden forces shaping modern life, from the crisis of meaning in achievement culture to the essential role of mattering in personal, workplace, and societal health.
Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It
In Never Enough, award-winning reporter Jennifer Breheny Wallace investigates the deep roots of toxic achievement culture, and finds out what we must do to fight back. Drawing on interviews with families, educators, and an original survey of nearly 6,000 parents, she exposes how the pressure to perform is not a matter of parental choice but baked in to our larger society and spurred by increasing income inequality and dwindling opportunities. As a result, children are increasingly absorbing the message that they have no value outside of their accomplishments, a message that is reinforced by the media and greater culture at large.
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2024-25 Speaker: Jean Twenge |
About the 2024-25 Author, Jean Twenge
Jean Twenge, PhD, frequently discusses generational differences and technology based on a dataset of 43 million people. Her research has been covered in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, and The Washington Post, and she has been featured on Today, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Real Time with Bill Maher, Meet the Press, Fox and Friends, NBC Nightly News, Dateline NBC, and National Public Radio. Dr. Twenge also contributed to The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.
Generations: The Real Difference Between Gen Z, Millenials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents and What They Mean for America's Future
Dr. Twenge will discuss the complexities of generational shifts and how they shape society by analyzing how technological advancements and resulting social changes have influenced different generations' personalities, behaviors, and values. Comparing different generations, she will highlight how the digital age has exacerbated feelings of loneliness, isolation and depression, especially among Gen Z.
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2023-24 Speaker: Mary Ann Little |
About the 2023-24 Author, Mary Ann Little
Mary Ann Little, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who has been in private practice for over four decades. She is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and has served as an adjunct professor in the departments of psychology and special education at the University of Texas at Dallas. She has been a consultant to numerous educational and psychiatric facilities and frequently lectures to both lay and professional audiences.
Childhood Narcissism: Strategies to Raise Unselfish, Unentitled, and Empathetic Children
Raising empathetic and unselfish young people in today's "all about me" world might seem impossible. Still, new parenting approaches help parents recognize narcissistic tendencies and develop parenting practices that can reverse them before they become entrenched.
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