WELCOME

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Robert is the author of Strikeout at Hell Gate, a novel about baseball set in racially torn New York in 1990.  An L.A. Press Club Award-winning journalist, he has written for Thrive Global, the Huffington Post, the L.A. Times, the L.A. Weekly and the Jewish Journal, among other publications.  He is a graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Management.

In March 1997, Robert had a psychotic break that landed him in the USC psychiatric ward.  He had a relapse in January 1999 in which he was hospitalized at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Thankfully, Robert has tamed his illness over the past two decades.  He has benefited from therapy, medication, writing, exercise, and listening to Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones.  Most importantly, he receives oodles of love from his wife, Barbara, whom he met at a UCLA writing class in 1996.

In the years since subduing his illness, Robert has written roughly 300 newspaper articles on subjects ranging from sports to politics, arts to mental health policy.  More than anything, he has dedicated his writing career to reducing stigma directed against those suffering from mental illness.

In addition to his articles, Robert has given numerous speeches over the years, including at schizophrenia conferences at Patton State Hospital and Loma Linda University Medical School, two institutions in Southern California. He was the keynote speaker at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital's Inaugural Worldwide Suicide Prevention Day Conference, as well as at an annual gala for Thresholds, a mental-health support organization in Chicago.  

He has also spoken about mental health and writing at prisons, boys & girls clubs, libraries and schools in the Southland.