Dr. Janice Presser

Dr. Janice Presser is a developmental theorist, systems scientist, relationship ontologist, and writer whose work explores how people grow, connect, and adapt across the lifespan. After beginning her career as a social caseworker in New York City, she taught childbirth classes, counseled breastfeeding mothers, and wrote bestselling trade books on child and family development for Rodale, Ballantine, Knopf, and Doubleday, with combined sales of nearly 250,000 copies. She later earned a PhD in Systems and Development and became a family therapist. When traditional psychology failed to answer the questions she was asking, she developed the ontology for Teaming Science and created the KnowMe interaction engine. She first shared the ideas behind interdependence in a 2014 TEDx talk exploring how human interaction develops. More recently, she expanded that work to examine how human development may evolve alongside artificial intelligence. After decades spent listening to how people make meaning of their lives and realizing that truth is often too strange to write directly, she turned to fiction. She does not believe in retirement and is an active member of the Constellation Research community.