Kristin Neff is the co-founder and board president of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of "Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself."

Neff received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, studying moral development. She did two years of postdoctoral study at the University of Denver studying self-concept development. During her last year of graduate school she became interested in Buddhism and has been practicing meditation in the Insight Meditation tradition ever since. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically. She is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, creating a scale to measure the construct over fifteen years ago. Along with her book, she has written numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic.

In conjunction with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, she has developed an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of teachers worldwide. They co-authored "The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook" as well as "Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals," both published by Guilford.

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