Dr. Curtis Peterson
The Psychology of Who We Are, Where We Belong, and Why It Matters
Booking Info
Expert In
- Social Connection, Belonging & Loneliness — Why connection matters and what creates meaningful belonging.
- Identity & the Social World — How relationships, groups, organizations, and communities shape who we become.
- Human Behavior & Social Influence — Making the hidden psychological forces behind everyday behavior understandable.
- Leadership, Culture & Human-Centered Organizations — Using psychology to create environments where people can connect, contribute, and thrive.
- Violence Prevention & Human Services — Applying decades of field experience and psychological science to prevention, intervention, and meaningful change.
Experience
- 20+ Years of Professional Training & Public Speaking — Delivered training and presentations on intimate partner violence, sexual violence, prevention, human behavior, psychology, and social-service practice to professional and community audiences.
- Psychology Professor & Educator — More than 16+ years teaching psychology and social/behavioral science, translating complex research into engaging, understandable material for diverse audiences.
- Higher-Education Leadership — Former Dean and Interim Dean at Tohono O’odham Community College, with experience presenting and leading conversations involving faculty, administrators, students, and institutional stakeholders.
- Program & Curriculum Developer — Designed and redesigned psychology, social-services, addiction-studies, and professional-development programs, connecting psychological science with practical workforce and community needs.
- Multidisciplinary Human-Services Experience — Speaking expertise informed by direct professional experience as an advocate, shelter manager, clinician, prevention coordinator, administrator, researcher, and professor.
- Digital Educator & Public Communicator — Develops psychology lectures, educational media, podcast content, and public-facing resources designed to make psychological science relevant beyond the classroom.
About Dr. Curtis Peterson
Dr. Curtis Peterson is a social psychologist, professor, researcher, and speaker who explores a deceptively simple question: Why do people become who they become? Drawing on more than two decades of work in human services and violence prevention, more than a decade teaching psychology, and research on social identity, loneliness, and belonging, Dr. Peterson brings psychology out of the textbook and into the places where people actually live, work, lead, struggle, connect, and change.
His work challenges one of our culture’s most persistent assumptions—that people can be understood primarily as individuals. Through his Ecological Identity Model, Dr. Peterson explores how relationships, organizations, communities, and larger social systems continually send signals about who we are, whether we belong, and where we fit. His talks translate this science into compelling stories and practical insights about loneliness, human connection, leadership, identity, social influence, resilience, and the environments we create for one another.
What makes a Dr. Peterson presentation different is the intersection of science and lived practice. His career has included work with survivors of family violence, advocacy and intervention programs, organizational leadership, higher education, program development, and psychological research. Rather than simply telling audiences what psychology says, he invites them to examine their own assumptions, recognize the often-invisible social forces shaping human behavior, and consider how changing an environment can sometimes change a life.
Whether speaking to educators, leaders, human-service professionals, organizations, or general audiences, Dr. Peterson makes complex psychological science accessible without making it simplistic. Audiences leave with more than information—they leave looking differently at themselves, the people around them, and the social worlds we build together.