Madeline Levine, Ph.D.

Madeline Levine, Ph.D. is a psychologist with close to 30 years of experience as a clinician, consultant, educator and author. Her New York Times bestseller, The Price of Privilege, explores the reasons why teenagers from affluent families are experiencing epidemic rates of emotional problems. Her latest book, Teach Your Children Well, also a New York Times bestseller, tackles our current narrow definition of success – how it unnecessarily stresses academically talented kids and marginalizes many more whose talents and interests are less amenable to measurement. The development of skills needed to be successful in the 21st century – creativity, collaboration, innovation – are not easily developed in our competitive, fast-paced, high pressure world. Teach Your Children Well gives practical, research-based solutions to help parents return their families to healthier and saner versions of themselves by remembering that successful parenting is measured 20 or 30 years down the road, not at the end of any particular grading period. Both books have been translated into Chinese, Russian, Japanese and multiple other languages.

Dr. Levine is also a co-founder of Challenge Success, a project at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. Challenge Success believes that our increasingly competitive world has led to tremendous anxiety about our children’s futures and has resulted in a high pressure, myopic focus on grades, test scores and performance. This kind of pressure and narrow focus isn’t helping our kids become the resilient, capable, meaningful contributors we need in the 21st century. Challenge Success provides families and schools with the practical research-based tools they need to raise healthy, motivated kids, capable of reaching their full potential.

Dr. Levine graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Education. She began her career as an elementary and junior high school teacher in the South Bronx of New York before moving to California and earning her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology. She has had a large clinical practice with an emphasis on child and adolescent problems and parenting issues, and she has taught Child Development classes to graduate students at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. For many years, Dr. Levine has been a consultant to various schools, from preschool through high school, public as well as private, throughout the country. Currently she spends most of her time crisscrossing the country speaking to parents, educators, students and business leaders as well as consulting with major corporations and high net worth individuals.

Dr. Levine is highly sought after as a lecturer and keynote speaker for parents, educators and business leaders both nationally and internationally. She is frequently the go-to person on issues of parenting for both print media and radio. She has been featured on television programs such as Katie, The Today Show and The Lehrer Report and on multiple radio stations including NPR programs such as the Diane Rehm Show and Forum. Emailed over a million times, her August 2012 New York Times op ed piece is one of the most emailed op ed pieces in the history of the New York Times.