Dana Suskind
- Dr. Dana Suskind is a pediatric physician, Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics, and the founder aProfessor of Surgery
- Co-Director, TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health
Director, Pediatric Cochlear Implantation Program - Author of Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain and Parent Nation
In Person-Fee 🛈
Fee Range
$20,000 - $30,000
Virtual Fee:
$10,000 - $15,000
Travels From
Illinois
Thirty Million Words Initiative - Parenting Language to Build Children's Brain, Dana Suskind
Dana Suskind Speaker Biography
Dr. Dana Suskind is a pediatric physician, Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics, and the founder and director of the TMW Initiative. Dr. Suskind's lectures stress the importance of early language exposure for developing children and draw on her own experiences with patients and neuroscience research.
Dana Suskind, MD, is Founder and Co-Director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health, Director of the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program, and Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics, and Public Policy (affiliate) at the University of Chicago.
As a surgeon, social scientist, and leading authority on the role parents and caregivers play in promoting children’s healthy brain development, Dr. Dana Suskind approaches her fight against this nation’s opportunity gaps from a unique and rich perspective rooted in the knowledge that science can and should be the basis for social change.
Dr. Dana Suskind’s career, which began in the operating room, evolved when she observed profound inequities among her patients, with some thriving after receiving a cochlear implant, and other struggling to meet their intellectual potential. Recognizing the critical importance of early language exposure on the developing child, she founded the precursor to the TMW Center for Public Health + Early Learning (the Thirty Million Word Initiative) in 2008. Since then, Dr. Suskind and her team have designed, delivered, and rigorously evaluated cutting-edge programs that help parents and caregivers harness the power of their language to build children’s brains and shape their futures.
As TMW Center programs have reached over 5,000 families in Chicago and beyond, Dr. Dana Suskind’s research and thought leadership have reached and inspired countless others. She has a unique ability to bring together leaders from all sectors and disciplines in pursuit of a revolutionary vision: A nation that treats healthy cognitive development as a fundamental right; a society that uses science and the tools of public health to ensure all children reach their full potential.
Her ideas and efforts have been recognized by organizations as diverse as the Schmidt Futures Fund, which supports the TMW Center’s innovative technology solutions, the Steve Nash Foundation, which partnered with the TMW Center to launch a version of its program tailored specifically for dads, and the Obama White House, which invited Dr. Suskind to lead the first-ever “Bridging the Thirty Million Word Gap” convening in 2013.
Under Dr. Suskind’s leadership, the TMW Center is driving a push for population-level change ushered in by a community-wide approach to early learning. The Center partners with communities to embed its evidence-based interventions into existing health, education, and community service systems. The impact of this approach will soon be felt in communities around the nation.
Once profiled in The Chicago Tribune’s “Remarkable Woman” series, Dr. Dana Suskind is the author of over 50 scientific publications , the “empowering” and “beautifully written” Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain (Dutton, 2015) and Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child’s Potential, Fulfilling Society’s Promise (Dutton, 2022). She is a member of the American Academic of Pediatrics and a Fellow for the council on Early Childhood. Her work has been profiled by numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, The Economist, Forbes, NPR, and Freakonomics. She lives in Chicago with her husband and their blended family of eight kids. In her free time, she likes to read bike with her husband and ignore the financial implications of having four kids in college.
Parent Nation
Weaving together the latest science on the developing brain with heart-breaking and relatable stories of families from all walks of life, Dr. Dana Suskind shows that the status quo—scores of parents convinced they should be able to shoulder the enormous responsibility of early childhood care and education on their own—is not only unsustainable, but deeply detrimental to the wellbeing of children, families, and society. In this thought-provoking workshop, she provides a blueprint for the path forward, clearly outlining how society can and should help families meet the developmental needs of their children.
Thirty Million Words
The founder and director of the Thirty Million Words Initiative, Dr. Dana Suskind explains why just simply talking to a child is the single most important thing one can do to help the child’s future success in life. Suskind reveals the recent science behind this truth and outlines precisely how to best put it into practice.
The Importance of Language and the Science of Brain Development
Words are the building blocks of a child’s brain. The more words a child hears, the faster their vocabularies grow, the higher their IQ scores and the greater their reading comprehension, spatial and math abilities. A dearth of words during the critical years of a child’s development (from age 0 to 3) can prevent that child from ever reaching their full potential. By tuning in, talking more, and taking turns with their children, parents can help close the achievement gap, one child at a time.
