We asked 13 leaders in psychiatry and mental health, all of them members of the BBRF Scientific Council, to reflect on the life and contributions of Dr. Herbert Pardes, the Council’s founding president.

In an excerpt from his recently published memoir, Dr. Herbert Pardes explains how through the formation of BBRF, citizen philanthropy was directed to the cause of advancing research on the brain and psychiatric illness—a cause that was close to his heart and which played a central role in his