John Weisz PhD

Harvard University
Professor of Psychology, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School

Judge Baker ChildrenÂ’'s Center
President and CEO


Dr. John Weisz is Professor of Psychology in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences and in Harvard Medical School. He is also President and CEO of the Judge Baker Children’s Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Previously, he was Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he served for a term as Director of the Graduate Program in Clinical Psychology and Director of the Psychology Clinic. He grew up in Mississippi and received his BA from Mississippi College. After serving as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, he studied at Yale University, where he received a PhD in clinical and developmental psychology. He then held faculty appointments at Cornell and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before moving to UCLA. He has served as President of the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (the largest professional organization of researchers and practitioners in the field) and as President of the International Society for the Study of Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (the primary scientific organization in the field). He is Director and Principal Investigator of the Research Network on Youth Mental Health, funded by the MacArthur Foundation since 2001. His written work includes more than 215 articles and chapters, and 8 books, focused primarily on youth problem behavior and disorders, cultural factors, and psychotherapy for children and adolescents. His most recent books are Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents: Evidence-Based Treatments and Case Examples, published by Cambridge University Press, and Evidence-Based Psychotherapies for Children and Adolescents (in press, edited by John Weisz and Alan Kazdin). He and his wife Jenny, a child advocate attorney, have four children.