Family Well-Being for the Greater Good

Celebrating the launch of our science-based workbook for people supporting parents


  • Venue: Zoom
  • Date: Tuesday, June 17th, 2025
  • Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PT
  • Price: Free
  • Register Here

Parenting professionals, we’d love for you to join us for the launch of Family Well-Being for the Greater Good: A science-based workbook for people supporting parents. We’re excited to share this new resource, thoughtfully designed to support parenting professionals care for their own social and emotional well-being while also offering practical tools to support the families they serve

This workbook is designed for a wide range of practitioners who support parents and caregivers of children from preschool through high school. Whether you work in a community organization—as a parent educator, social worker, or faith leader—or in a school setting as a family engagement specialist or counselor, there’s something here for you. 

Created in partnership with educators, clinicians, researchers, and others working closely with families, this workbook is grounded in real-world needs and practices.  During the launch event, you’ll hear directly from the authors about what inspired this project and how it can serve as a meaningful resource in your work.

  • Maryam Abdullah

    Maryam Abdullah, Ph.D., is the Parenting Program Director of the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a developmental psychologist with expertise in parent-child relationships and children’s social and emotional development. At the GGSC, Maryam’s role is to develop resources for professionals and organizations providing parenting education to foster parents' well-being and to help parents nurture compassion and resilience in their children. She also shares the latest developmental science findings on Greater Good, the GGSC's online magazine, which offers science-based insights for a meaningful life. Maryam has also been invited to share research findings on parenting and children's social and emotional development with The Washington Post, BBC, CNN, NPR, and more. Prior to joining GGSC, she was an Assistant Project Scientist at the University of California, Irvine Child Development School in the Department of Pediatrics, a school-based behavioral health program where she supported parents and children, and conducted intervention and evaluation research.

  • Allison Briscoe-Smith

    Dr. Briscoe-Smith earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University.  She then received her clinical psychology Ph.D. from University of California Berkeley. She then went on to continue her specialization in trauma and ethnic minority mental health through internship and postdoctoral work at University of California San Francisco/San Francisco General Hospital.  She has combined her love of teaching and advocacy by serving as a professor and by directing mental health programs for children experiencing trauma, homelessness or foster care.  Much of her work has been with schools, as a clinician, consultant and trainer.  Currently she is the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Wright Institute where she is a professor. She provides consultation and training to bay area non profits and schools on how to support trauma informed practices and cultural accountability.

  • Beth Magistad

    Dr. Magistad is a Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) and has held a Minnesota teaching license in Parent and Family Education since 1998. She spent 20 years teaching a wide variety of courses to both graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Minnesota. She has extensive knowledge of Family Life Education and has taught courses in many of the CFLE content areas including Parent-Child Relationships, Family Policy, Family Resource Management, and courses focused on a variety of interpersonal and family relationships such as Parent as Couples and Aging Families. She served as the Director of Parent and Family Education at the University of Minnesota from 2018-2022. Since 2022, she has been the editor of the National Council on Family Relations CFLE Network newsletter and will be the editor of the new NCFR Nexus newsletter debuting in Fall 2025.