Susan Painter, Ph.D., is a founder of the field of Design Psychology. She is a developmental psychologist, an urban planner, an award-winning teacher, and a principal at ForrestPainter Design, a Venice, California Design Psychology practice.
In addition to her work at ForrestPainter Design, Susan Painter is Senior Planner, Director of Research and human factors planning specialist in the Urban Design and Planning studio at AC Martin Partners, Los Angeles, specializing in university campus master plans and campus residential communities.
As a faculty member at the UCLA Architecture/Interior Design Program, she taught Fundamentals of Interior Design and Human Factors in Design, and, along with her design partner, Constance Forrest, Psy.D., developed and taught the first university-based course in Design Psychology. She received the Year 2000 Teacher of the Year award. Dr. Painter was a tenured associate professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where she taught in the Psychology Department and the Schools of Architecture and Industrial Design. A specialist in cross-disciplinary education, she served as guest professor and critic for an International Studio at the Bauhaus in Germany. Dr. Painter was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association in 1991 for her distinguished service to the field of Psychology. Her previous research areas include family development and family violence, and she served as founding director of the Canadian National Clearinghouse on Family Violence at Health & Welfare Canada.
Dr. Painter received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of British Columbia, where her dissertation research was on the development of parent-child emotional bonds. She holds a FIDER-accredited certificate in Interior Design from UCLA, where her design thesis, a pediatric clinic, received an award from the Center for Health Care Design. She completed a post-graduate course in Campus Residential Communities in the Harvard Graduate School of Design Executive Education program.