About cara

CARA NATTERSON, MD, is a pediatrician, consultant, and New York Times bestselling author. She’s also the co-founder and CEO of LESS AWKWARD, a company dedicated to flipping puberty positive

Cara’s books focus largely on puberty — some written for the kids going through it, and others for the adults helping them along the way. Her list of titles include the bestselling This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained and the New York Times bestselling The Care and Keeping of You series with more than 8 million copies in print. While this reach is incredible, the written word is only one way to transform the experience of adolescence.

Which is how Less Awkward came to life: a platform offering all the information anyone needs to know about the decade of puberty (yes, it now lasts that long!) which includes: the Less Awkward Community; This Is So Awkward podcast; the school-based health + sex ed curriculum That Health Class; and puberty-focused short-form edutainment across TikTok (here and here) and Instagram (here and here).

Less Awkward also has a product brand — OOMLA — offering apparel makes puberty more comfortable from head to toe. Super soft OOMBRAs are designed for tweens and teens with changing bodies. All-gender, loose and breezy OOMSHORTS allow for air-down-there — the anti-underwear. And OOMSOCKS literally take away foot stink (truly!).

Cara is a graduate of Harvard College and Johns Hopkins Medical School, and trained in pediatrics at UCSF. She spent 2000-08 caring for babies, tweens, and teens at Tenth Street Pediatrics in Santa Monica. In 2008, she founded Worry Proof Consulting to help everyone from parents to educators turn medical information into understandable, actionable, and entertaining advice. For the past 15 years, Cara has been a sought-after speaker to both kid- and adult audiences, and she has consulted with a range of companies across a variety of health and wellness issues.

Cara currently serves on the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Board of Directors. She has also served as a Director or Advisor for Starlight Children’s Foundation, The Honest Company, Zemcar/Grip Mobility, Baby2Baby, and The John Thomas Dye School. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two college-aged kids (when they feel like coming home to hang with their parents).