A native of Korea, Insoo balanced her heritage with Western scientific training in her clinical practice and teaching. Until she passed away January 10, 2007 at the age of 72 she was the Executive Director of Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, and was co-developer of the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy model along with her late husband, Steve de Shazer .

She authored numerous articles defining the SFBT approach, and 10 ground-breaking books exploring its application to a wide variety of clinical, school and social service settings.