Karyn Purvis, founder and Rees-Jones director of the TCU Institute of Child Development, has died of cancer. She was 66.

Purvis was perhaps most renowned for her development of trust-based relational intervention, an “attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention that is designed to meet the complex needs of vulnerable children.” Purvis had a passion for “children in hard places,” according to the TCU Institute of Child Development website.

Purvis was the mother of three sons and a grandmother of nine, two of whom are adopted.