Scholars in the Arts
"I am fascinated by the breadth of Art History and by how painting teaches a culture about itself."
Scholars in the News
Reshma Tharani, 21, is part of a new breed of community college student
Dr. Lawrence Kutner
Executive Director
Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D. is an internationally known psychologist and journalist who brings a broad array of professional and personal experiences to his work at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. He describes growing up in the Bronx in New York City as the child of an immigrant single mother who was a high school dropout as similar to the backgrounds of many Jack Kent Cooke Scholars.
His career has successfully combined clinical and academic work with a wide range of entrepreneurial ventures. He trained as a psychologist at the Mayo Clinic, and was on the psychiatry faculty at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was founder and co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media.
He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and was the recipient of one of the first Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowships from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In addition to his work in traditional areas of psychology and academia, he spent seven years writing the award-winning, internationally syndicated “Parent & Child” column for the New York Times, and another seven years as the "Ask the Expert" child behavior columnist for Parents magazine. The American Psychological Association (APA) gave him its National Psychology Award for Excellence in Newspaper Writing, citing his New York Times column as the best writing about psychology in the United States. In 2008, the APA gave him its Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Media Psychology.
He’s written five books for parents on child development and parent-child communication. His sixth book, Grand Theft Childhood, which he wrote with his wife Dr. Cheryl K. Olson, is based on research they conducted on violent video games and adolescents. He’s written chapters for several academic and professional books, including Massachusetts General Hospital Comprehensive Clinical Psychiatry: Expert Consult and Perspectives.
Dr. Kutner is also an Emmy award-winning television reporter and producer, and a former talk-show host on KGO Radio (ABC), the #1 news-talk station in the United States. He appears regularly on network, syndicated and major market television and radio programs as a child development and parenting expert.
He has also worked with a range of nonprofit organizations, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Johann Jacobs Foundation (Switzerland), and the Ovidiu Foundation (Romania). He’s on the board of advisors to the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships in Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center, where he is helping to expand that program globally.
Dr. Kutner has been a visiting professor and visiting scholar at several universities in the United States and in Europe. He received his undergraduate degree from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota.