KARYN PURVIS, PHD

Karyn Purvis, Ph.D., is the Director of the Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, Texas. During the past decade, she and her colleagues at the Institute have invested their efforts towards developing research-based interventions for at-risk children. Throughout her life, Karyn’s personal and professional calling has been to create a welcoming, loving environment for children who come from "hard places". Foster and adoption issues have always been at the heart of her work, and when her own children were small, she served as foster mother to many children. She serves as expert witness in court cases of child abuse, testifies for state and national legislation, and speaks frequently to national and international groups. Recent trips have taken her to varied national groups from trainings for judges and CPS workers, to international trainings for parents and professionals in England, Iceland, Scotland, Romania, Ethiopia, and Rwanda.