Inside the Adolescent Mind: Identity, Meaning, and Growing Up Today

Dr. Cara Natterson is a leading voice in puberty and adolescent health. A pediatrician, speaker, founder, and cohost of This Is So Awkward, the podcast, she is the author of 10 books including the best-selling This Is So Awkward: Modern PubertyExplained and the New York Times best-selling The Care and Keeping of Youseries.

Dr. Natterson’s journey through health advocacy began at Harvard College, Johns Hopkins Medical School, and the University of California at San Francisco, where she trained in pediatrics. In 2000, she joined Tenth Street Pediatrics in Santa Monica, caring for thousands of kids from birth through their teen years. In 2008, she founded Worry Proof Consulting, a practice that gave parents time their primary doctors often don’t have to cover medical, behavioral, and parenting issues in depth. She also began speaking to both kid and adult audiences about taking ownership of their health and wellness, translating cutting-edge research into understandable, actionable, and even entertaining information.

But it was her work with American Girl (AG) that really transformed her life: In 2011, she became the medical consultant on the original Care and Keeping book and over the next eight years authored several more in the series. Her five books with AG have more than eight million copies in print and are often described as iconic coming-of-age manuals.

When her own kids started puberty, Dr. Natterson founded the first company aimed at making puberty less cringey and more comfortable. It launched as a direct-to-consumer brand that made soft bras that actually worked without bulky pads or tight binding (Wirecutter called them “Best of”), breathable shorts (“functionally antifungal”), and socks that don’t smell (thanks to zinc-embedded fibers). Over the next five years, she partnered withVanessa Kroll Bennettto create content channels across social media, a podcast called This Is So Awkward (which has 2.5 million downloads to date), a growing library of books, and most recently a digital, school-based K–12 health and wellness curriculum that’s not even two years old but is already being used by schools in seven states and internationally. It’s all in service to her mission—which is, conveniently, also the name of her company: Less Awkward.

Dr. Natterson has served on several boards as a Director or Advisor, including Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Starlight Children’s Foundation, The Pad Project, The Honest Company, Zemcar/Grip Mobility, Baby2Baby, and The John Thomas Dye School.

She lives in Los Angeles with her very patient husband, two college-aged children (who aren’t home nearly enough!), and terribly behaved dogs.

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