In 1929, her mother insisted that the family move from their farm to Milwaukee so that Satir could attend high school. Satir’s high school years coincided with the Great Depression, and to help her family she took a part-time job and also attended as many courses as she could so that she could graduate early. In 1932, she received her high school diploma and promptly enrolled in Milwaukee State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.) To pay for her education she worked part-time for the Works Projects Administration and for Gimbels Department Store and further supplemented her income by babysitting. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education, and worked as a teacher for a few years.

Beginning in 1937, for three summers she took courses at Northwestern University in Chicago. She then enrolled full-time at the University of Chicago School of Social Services Administration. She finished her coursework for her master’s degree in 1943, and completed her thesis for her degree in 1948.

After graduating social work school, Satir began working in private practice. She met with her first family in 1951, and by 1955 was working with Illinois Psychiatric Institute, encouraging other therapists to focus on families instead of individual patients. By the end of the decade she had moved to California, where she cofounded the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California. MRI received a grant from NIMH in 1962, allowing them to begin the first formal family therapy training program ever offered; Satir was hired as its Training Director.

Satir published her first book, Conjoint Family Therapy, in 1964, developed from the training manual she wrote for students at MRI. Her reputation grew with each subsequent book, and she travelled the world to speak on her methods. She also became a Diplomate of the Academy of Certified Social Workers and received the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy’s Distinguished Service Award.

Long interested in the idea of networking, Satir founded two groups to help individuals find mental health workers or other people who were suffering from similar issues to their own. In 1970, she organized “Beautiful People,” which later became known as the “International Human Learning Resources Network.” In 1977 she founded the Avanta Network, which was renamed to the Virginia Satir Global Network in 2010.

In 1984, Satir encouraged marriage and family therapists to shift their focus to relationship education: