Richard Schwartz, PhD began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in 1985 in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts.A featured speaker for national professional organizations, Dr. Schwartz has given thousands of workshops and keynote addresses. He published many books, including Internal Family Systems Therapy (Second Edition, Guilford, 2020), The Mosaic Mind (Trailheads Press, 2003), and No Bad Parts (Sounds True, 2021) as well as over fifty articles about IFS. Dr. Schwartz founded and led the IFS Institute, which is a vibrant and rapidly growing organization today. Dr. Schwartz is a teaching associate in the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance, which is affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.