Gabor Maté, MD, is a renowned speaker and bestselling author. Dr. Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress and childhood development.

His Compassionate Inquiry approach draws from his professional work as a physician as well as his personal experience, having suffered trauma as an infant in Nazi-occupied Hungary, and his adult struggles with behavioral addictions, depression, and an ADHD diagnosis.

As an author, Dr. Maté has written several bestselling books published in more than 20 languages on five continents, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction; When the Body Says No: Exploring The Stress/Disease Connection; and his newest book, The Myth of Normal.

Among other honors, Dr. Maté has received the Hubert Evans Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, an Outstanding Alumnus Award from Simon Fraser University, and the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction.

"Trauma is not what happens to us. It’s what happens inside of us as a result of what happens to us.”

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Gabor Maté receives compensation as a presenter. He receives a speaking honorarium and recording and book royalties from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Gabor Maté has no relevant non-financial relationships.

Richard Schwartz began his career as a family therapist and an academic at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There he discovered that family therapy alone did not achieve full symptom relief, and in asking patients why, he learned that they were plagued by what they called "parts." These patients became his teachers as they described how their parts formed networks of inner relationship that resembled the families he had been working with. He also found that as they focused on and, thereby, separated from their parts, they would shift into a state characterized by qualities like curiosity, calm, confidence and compassion. He called that inner essence the Self and was amazed to find it even in severely diagnosed and traumatized patients. From these explorations, the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model was born in the early 1980s.

IFS is now evidence-based and has become a widely-used form of psychotherapy, particularly with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic, and empowering perspective and a practical and effective set of techniques for working with individuals, couples, families, and more recently, corporations and classrooms.

In 2013, Schwartz left the Chicago area and now lives in Brookline, MA where he is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Richard Schwartz is the Founder and President of the IFS Institute. He maintains a private practice and has an employment relationship with Harvard Medical School. He receives royalties as a published author. Dr. Schwartz receives a speaking honorarium, recording, and book royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Richard Schwartz is a fellow of Meadows Behavioral Healthcare and is a member of the American Family Therapy Academy and the American Association for Marital and Family Therapy. He is a contributing editor for Family Therapy Networker. Dr. Schwartz serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, the Contemporary Family Therapy, the Journal of Family Psychotherapy, and the Family Therapy Collections.