Catherine Steiner-Adair has worked with girls on eating disorders and self-esteem, transforming their beliefs that their value comes only from their appearance and helping them develop pride in their whole selves. A clinical and developmental psychologist, Steiner-Adair trained under feminist psychoanalytic theorist Carol Gilligan at Harvard and began researching eating disorders in teenage girls. She noted that boys tied their self-esteem to their accomplishments and skills, while girls saw their worth either in their looks or their value to others. She continued to work with clients while researching possibilities for preventing girls from developing eating disorders in the first place, finally in 2005 co-creating Full of Ourselves, a program in which pre-teen girls receive leadership training and mentor younger girls to enable them to critique media images, stand up to bullying, and form a healthier sense of self. Steiner-Adair has written and edited extensively about eating disorder prevention. In 1999 she served as an editor for Preventing Eating Disorders: A Handbook of Interventions and Special Challenges. Her professional focus later shifted towards the effects of emerging technology on the lives of young people. In 2013 she published The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age, named a Wall Street Journal best nonfiction book of 2013.  Steiner-Adair served as an associate psychologist at McLean Hospital and clinical instructor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for over 20 years. Her recent work has focused on helping parents, educators, and health professionals mentally recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. She has also worked as an advisor to schools in crisis, helping to rebuild school culture and community trust.