Rosenberg, who was born in 1934 and passed away in 2015, was a psychologist, author, and teacher who specialized in the area of compassionate communication. Rosenberg was born in Canton, Ohio. His family moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1943, weeks before the race riots in that same year in which 34 people were killed. He refers to this event in his book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, as one of his earliest exposures to the impacts of the hatred, violence, and anger that emerge when people view others as enemies, rather than seeing their shared humanity. Rosenberg also refers to the violent physical bullying and cruel taunting that he experienced as a Jewish child, citing this as one of his early teachers about the impact of violent thoughts about others.

A trained clinical psychologist, Rosenberg worked in private practice, as well as in schools and hospitals using his framework of compassion to reimagine the pathologizing of medical-based models of mental illness and disturbance. Rosenberg strongly condemned the use of punitive punishment and reward systems in schools and jails, encouraging all people to engage in vulnerable, compassionate communication about their needs. He believed that this could solve much of the world’s micro and macro conflicts, including the judgmental and negative self-talk that we level at ourselves when we make mistakes.