The history and growth of WholeFamily.com
WholeFamily.com was founded in the spring of 1996 by Dr. Michael Tobin, a clinical psychologist and veteran couples and family therapist. He was joined by Ms. Toby Klein Greenwald, a journalist and educator.
Dr. Tobin envisioned an on-line destination that would serve as a vehicle for family conflict resolution, a site that would revolve around vignettes depicting real-life experiences in which couples, parents and kids could act out family and personal conflicts, followed by the comments and advice of psychologists and other experts.
Dr. Tobin and Ms. Klein Greenwald, who wrote much of the original material, built a team which included additional psychologists, writers and web experts. The site received extraordinary critical acclaim in the print and electronic media, including in Time, Family Life, Yahoo, Internet Life, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, the BBC, the Jerusalem Report and the Jerusalem Post. WholeFamily.com garnered over 50 awards and was a finalist site in the GII Awards, the Academy awards of the Internet at that time.
Following seed round financing, WholeFamily.com expanded to a team that included experts in marketing and finance, in addition to more web developers, writers and experts in the areas of family relationships and education. One of WholeFamily's on-line dramas, Kate - The Affair, a unique self-help novel on marital conflict and fidelity, by Tobin and Greenwald, was published in Israel and Germany.
The bubble, the persistence, and the rebirth
In the autumn of 2000, WholeFamily.com closed its office but remained online, with two thousand pages of evergreen material. Over the past ten years, WholeFamily continued to be a major resource for hundreds of thousands of couples and families. Dr. Tobin continued his work as a marital and family therapist, and as trainer and supervisor of other therapists, and Ms. Klein Greenwald returned to her work as a journalist and educator, and as director of educational theater projects.
Due to the continued popularity of WholeFamily, Dr. Tobin and Ms. Klein Greenwald gave J-Town Productions the task of redesigning WholeFamily.com with the goal of re-launching the new site on January 1, 2011. Along with the new design, we’ve added new content, tools and technologies, with the goal of helping couples and families to create loving and supportive relationships.
