Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD, is an internationally recognized scholar, award-winning poet, Diplomate senior Jungian psychoanalyst, and cantadora (keeper of the old stories in the Latina tradition.), and post- trauma specialist. In addition to her international bestseller "Women Who Run With the Wolves" (145 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, published in 35 languages worldwide). Dr. Estés is deputy managing editor and columnist writing on politics, spirituality and culture at the newsblog TheModerateVoice.com and a columnist at The National Catholic Reporter online.

She began her work as a post-trauma specialist in the 1960s at hospitals, caring for severely injured children, and 'shell-shocked' war veterans and their families. She ministers in the fields of childbearing loss, surviving families of murder victims, as well as critical incident work, and PTSD. She served at disaster sites, first developing post-trauma recovery protocol for earthquake survivors in Armenia. That protocol is now used as one of the top three protocols to teach survivors to do post-trauma work onsite within a few hours.

She served Columbine High School and community after the massacre, 1999-2003. She works with 9-11 survivor families on both east and west coasts.

Estés, a former hard-scrabble welfare mother, is the recipient of numerous awards including the first Joseph Campbell Keeper of the Lore Award; the Gradiva Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis; and The Catholic Press Association award for her writing. She received the Las Primeras Award, "the first of her kind" from the Mexican American's Women's Foundation, Washington D.C. She is a 2006 inductee to the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.