Cara Natterson, MD

Dr. Cara Natterson is a pediatrician, speaker, educator, and leading voice in tween and teen health. She graduated from Harvard college and Johns Hopkins Medical School and trained in pediatrics at UCSF. Cara launched her career at Tenth Street Pediatrics in Santa Monica. She traded patient care for writing, and has authored 10 books including the New York Times bestselling The Care and Keeping of You series with American Girl. In 2020, Cara founded the first company aimed at making the tween and teen years more comfortable, starting with physical products. Over the next five years, she partnered with Vanessa Kroll Bennett to create content channels across social media, a podcast called This Is So Awkward (which has 2.5M 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 already 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.