Let’s raise a healthier generation.
Dr. Dana Dorfman’s talks help families navigate achievement-obsessed culture and the ongoing mental health crisis.
With over 25 years of clinical practice and research, she brings a wealth of practical tools and humor.
Amidst our mental health crisis and success-obsessed culture, Dana helps teens, parents, and communities manage anxiety and achieve their goals with integrity.
She combines her three decades of mental health expertise with innovative approaches and down-to-earth wisdom that’s impactful for both large speaking events and intimate group conversations.
Speaker
Dana customizes speeches, Q&As, and intimate group conversations for your event or workshop.
Author
Learn about her book, When Worry Works: How to Harness Your Parenting Stress And Guide Your Teen to Success.
Therapist
Dr. Dorfman practices individual, adolescent, and preadolescent psychotherapy, as well as couples and relationship therapy.
About Dana
“Rhoda Morgenstern meets Sigmund Freud” is how one audience member describes Dr. Dorfman. With thirty years’ experience and academic research, a New Yorker’s sense of humor, and a mother’s warmth, she unpacks complex and sometimes taboo topics with wisdom and relatability. She’s the author of When Worry Works: How to Harness Your Parenting Stress And Guide Your Teen to Success.
Dr. Dorfman balances research and brings it down to earth from the “ivory tower” in funny, accessible ways. She’s self-revealing as well, because in her experience, being honest with her issues helps build trust with her patients and an audience. She connects with small groups in intimate settings like book clubs and community groups as well as with larger audiences like schools, conferences, and houses of worship.
Watch a clip of Dr. Dorfman
In 2021, Dana spoke at a Lululemon-sponsored event in New York City. Here she talks about—what else?—the subtle ways we can shame our kids.
Dana's Signature Topics
Dana goes beyond the hysteria and headlines and gets to the root of what parents and caregivers need to know.
Approaches to managing worry, anxious thought patterns and distortions, plus how to make our worries work, particularly for parents.
Dana created a practical framework (along with a free, confidential quiz) to help parents identify the unconscious ways their anxiety can manifest.
From her years of working with the country’s high-achievers, Dana gently invites audiences to consider how their cultural and personal relationship with achievement affect their family—and how to break negative patterns.
All parents want to know how to find the right balance, and Dana’s broken it down into salient, easily applicable takeaways.
Dana helps parents work on building a healthier relationship during the most tumultuous period of their kid’s development. This includes:
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Shame-free framework for parents to help guide their teen to success
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How parents’ fixation on the future can backfire—and what they can do about it
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Subtle shifts that parents can make right now that over time will make an impact on their relationship
We’re raising a generation like no other—and Dana knows them well. (She’s a mom to two Gen Zs herself.)
Testimonials
Dana’s talk was timely and impactful; just what our audience needed. She was very easy to work with and so generous with her time!
— Amy Rahmani, Director, Arts & Culture, Evelyn Rubenstein JCC of Houston
I’ve had the pleasure of attending many of Dr. Dorfman’s workshops and I can wholeheartedly say that she is one of the most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met. She has an incredible sense of humor and rapport with parents. I could listen to her all day long.
— Jennifer Kendall, Assistant Director of Preschool, Brooklyn Heights Synagogue
As Seen In
Horace Mann School
The Dalton School
Hunter High School
Previous Audiences
The Marlene Meyerson Manhattan JCC
United Nations International School
National Adoption Conference
What Fresh Hell podcast
SoHo Parenting Center
NYU Child Study Center
Lululemon
Inquire about an in-person or virtual event with Dana
Email Dana’s events team: info@tinyapplegroup.com