Dr. Robyn Silverman
body image & bullying expert
Dr. Robyn Silverman, a child/teen development specialist, body image/body bullying expert, sought‐after speaker, and award-winning writer, is known for her no-nonsense yet positive approach to helping young people and their families thrive. Her groundbreaking research at Tufts University on young women is the foundation for her new book, Good Girls Don’t Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls & How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It.
Dr. Silverman is a featured expert on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, The Tyra Show, NBC’s LXtv, Fox News, Nightline, and more. She is also the parenting expert for Ask.com. Dr. Silverman has been quoted in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Daily News, Parenting Magazine, Prevention, SELF, and on hundreds of websites like AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, and US News & World Report.
She has also been the child and teen development expert for 18 books, including 113 Things to Do by 13, and 16 middle school guide books. She is the expert in appearance discrimination and body esteem development for the Applied Developmental Science Encyclopedia, a handbook for psychologists. Dr. Silverman serves as an Advisory Board Member for Shaping Youth, a consortium of media and marketing professionals concerned about harmful messages to children, and serves as their Body Image and Character Impact Expert.
As a way to interact with girls personally, Dr. Silverman created The Sassy Sisterhood Girls Circle, a program for young adolescent girls that explores issues that affect body esteem and self-image. It was designed to foster self-awareness, challenge stereotypes, counter trends toward self-doubt, and enable genuine self-expression through verbal sharing and creative activity.
An award-winning columnist, Dr. Silverman keeps in touch with parents, educators, and fans through Twitter (/DrRobyn) and Facebook (/DrRobynSilverman) as well as through her blog which appears on DrRobynSilverman.com. She provides popular teleseminars for parents, including a Spring 2010 collaborative project with best-selling author Rachel Simmons (Odd Girl Out, Curse of the Good Girl), during which over 500 parents participated. She is one of the featured experts for Campus Outreach Services 2012.
Dr. Silverman presents nationally at schools, universities, businesses, and organizations. She advises teens, parents, educators, and professionals on how to best help our youth reach their potential and become leaders. She is the creator of Powerful Words Character Development, a character education and leadership development program for after-school programs, including martial arts, that runs in ten countries for children ages four and up.
Her overall philosophy is that young people are assets to be developed rather than deficits to be managed. At the root of Dr. Silverman’s research, speaking, and writing is a profound compassion for young people and a determination to help them reach their potential, independent of societal constraints. “I don’t look at children and teens and figure out how to fix them,” she says. “I want to motivate every young person to find his/her strengths and thrive.”
Topics:
- Good Girls Don’t Get Fat: Surviving & Thriving in a Thin-Is-In World
- Leadership Bootcamp: Launch your Leadership Skills
- Creating a Community of Character: Cultivating Responsible, Respectful, Role Models in Your School
- Media Masquerade: Media’s Impact on Girls, Body Image & Self Esteem
- Bullying Children with Differences
- Light their S.P.A.R.K.! How to Build Assets, Goals & Drive in Children/Teens
