ESDPA Speaker Series
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.
| 2024-25 Speaker: Jean Twenge |
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About the 2024-25 Author, Jean Twenge
Generations: The Real Difference Between Gen Z, Millenials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents and What They Mean for America's Future
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| 2023-24 Speaker: Mary Ann Little |
About the 2023-24 Author, Mary Ann Little
Childhood Narcissism: Strategies to Raise Unselfish, Unentitled, and Empathetic Children
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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.
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.
