Psychologist Susan Linn is Associate Director of the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children's Center and an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She has written extensively about the effects of media and commercial marketing on children. Her book, Consuming Kids, published originally by The New Press (2004), and released in paperback by Anchor Books (2005), has been praised in publications as diverse as the Wall Street Journal and Mother Jones. Dr. Linn has also published articles on the commercialism of childhood in the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, for Knight-Ridder, and in The American Prospect.
Dr. Linn is a co-founder of the national coalition Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. In 2000 she was appointed to the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Advertising to Children. Her work on behalf of children has been featured on national media programs such as Sixty Minutes, Now with Bill Moyers, and Weekend News Tonight. She is featured in the acclaimed film, The Corporation, produced by Zeitgeist Films.
An award winning ventriloquist and children's entertainer, Dr. Linn is internationally known for her innovative work using puppets in child psychotherapy. She pioneered this work at Children's Hospital in Boston, where she used puppets to help children cope with their hospital experiences and is now continuing her work at the Children's AIDS Program, which is affiliated with Boston Medical Center. She has lectured about puppetry as a tool for psychotherapy throughout North America, Europe, Israel, and Japan.
Combining her skills as a writer and performer with her role as a child therapist, Dr. Linn has written and appeared in a number of video programs designed to help children cope with issues ranging from mental illness to death and loss. With Family Communications, Inc., the producers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Dr. Linn created Different and the Same: Helping Children Identify and Prevent Prejudice, video based classroom materials designed for first to third graders. The series won the Media Award from the Association of Multicultural Educators and is being used in all fifty states.