Lenore Skenazy

After her newspaper column “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone” landed her on The Today Show, Fox News, NPR, and everywhere in between, Lenore went on to write Free-Range Kids, the book-turned-movement. She has been profiled in The New Yorker, hosted the reality show, “World’s Worst Mom,” and has lectured everywhere from Disney to Microsoft to schools across the country — and the Bulgarian Happiness Festival. It was Lenore who created the annual “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day.” A graduate of Yale, Skenazy lives in New York with her husband and beloved computer. Her kids have flown the coop, which is good for proof-of-concept purposes, but she misses them.