Jennifer Breheny Wallace is a journalist whose work has focused on parenting, achievement culture, and well-being. She began her career at CBS’s 60 Minutes and later moved into print journalism, including work for The Wall Street Journal. Her previous best-selling book, Never Enough, investigates how achievement culture has contributed to a mental-health crisis among adolescents. As Wallace states in the Introduction, her research for that book led her to the concept of mattering, which she describes as helping to buffer young people against anxiety and depression. Mattering expands on this idea, presenting the need to feel valued and to add value as a universal human need across different ages, identities, and circumstances.

Wallace approaches the subject as a journalist who reports on external findings. She synthesizes academic research, interviews experts, and weaves in personal stories from a wide range of individuals to make psychological concepts accessible to the general reader. For Mattering, she spent six years speaking with hundreds of people around the world and also conducted an international survey of more than 2,000 employees. The book therefore draws on a broad range of reported experiences, while its psychological claims rely substantially on the work of established researchers. Wallace primarily interprets and synthesizes this existing research alongside her own reporting. Readers should distinguish between findings supported by academic literature and the broader conclusions and practical guidance she develops from her reporting and synthesis.