DR. MARTIN SELIGMAN -Keynote Speaker

Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D. works on positive psychology, learned helplessness, depression, ethnopolitical conflict, and on optimism. He is the director of the Positive Psychology Center and the Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Learned Optimism, What You Can Change & What You Can't, The Optimistic Child, Learned Helplessness. His latest book is Authentic Happiness. He received both the American Psychological Society's William James Award (for basic science) and the Cattell Award (for the application of science) and the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. The National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation have supported Dr. Seligman’s research. He holds honorary doctorates from Madrid (Complutense), The University of East London, and Uppsala (Sweden). In 1996 he was elected President of the American Psychological Association by the largest vote in modern history. He is the director of the Positive Psychology Network, and his current mission is the attempt to transform social science to work on the best things in life—virtue, positive emotion, and positive institutions—and not just on healing pathology.

DR. SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY

Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, where her teaching and mentoring of students have been recognized with the Faculty of the Year and Faculty Mentor of the Year Awards.  Originally from Russia, she received her A.B., summa cum laude, from Harvard University (1989) and her Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology from Stanford University (1994). In her work, Lyubomirsky has focused on developing a science of human happiness. To this end, her research addresses three critical questions:

      1) What makes people happy?
      2) Is happiness a good thing?
      3) How can we make people happier still?

In 2002, Lyubomirsky’s research was recognized with a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize. Currently, she is an associate editor of the Journal of Positive Psychology, a Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and (with co-PI Ken Sheldon) holds a 5-year million-dollar grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness. Her research has been written up in dozens of magazines and newspapers and she has appeared in multiple TV shows, radio shows, and feature documentaries in North America, Asia, and Europe.  Her book, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, was released by Penguin Press (North America, January 2008) and a dozen foreign publishers.

DR. GEORGE VAILLANT

George Vaillant M.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital.  Dr. Vaillant has spent his research career charting adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, heroin addiction, alcoholism, and personality disorder.  He has spent the last 35 years as Director of the Study of Adult Development at the Harvard University Health Service.  His published works include:

• Adaptation to Life
• The Wisdom of The Ego
• The Natural History of Alcoholism-Revisited
• Aging Well

His most recent book on the positive emotions, Spiritual Evolution, will be published by Doubleday Broadway in 2008. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Vaillant did his residency at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and completed his psychoanalytic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He has been a Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, is a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists and has been an invited speaker and consultant for seminars and workshops throughout the world.  A major focus of his work in the past has been individual adult development; more recently he has been interested in positive emotions and their relationship to community development. He is currently on the Steering Committee of Positive Psychology. Dr. Vaillant has received the Foundations Fund Prize for Research in Psychiatry from the American Psychiatric Association and the Jellinek Award for research in alcoholism.  Most recently he received The Distinguished Service Award from the American Psychiatric Association.

DR. CATHERINE LIM

Catherine Lim is a writer in Singapore, and has, to date, published 18 books, including collections of short stories, novels and a book of poems including Little Ironies - short stories of Singapore, O Singapore! - Stories in celebration, The Bondmaid, Following the Wrong God Home, Unhurried Thoughts at my Funeral. Two of her short story collections were used as literature texts for the G.C.E. Examinations conducted by Cambridge University, and her novels are regularly used in universities and colleges. They have been published in many countries, including U.S.A., U.K. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Spain, Israel and Iceland. Before she became a full time writer, she was a lecturer in the RLC (Regional Language Centre), Singapore, conducting courses in Sociolinguistics and the teaching of Literature for teachers in Southeast Asian countries. To maintain her links with the academic and professional worlds, she continues to give lectures at seminars and conferences both at home and abroad, and is a regular guest speaker on cruise ships. She is also a political commentator, giving lectures and writing articles on various political and social issues in Singapore. She was awarded the Southeast Asia Write Award in 1999, and an Honorary Doctorate in Literature by Murdoch University, Australia in 2000. In 2003, she was awarded the Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et Des Lettres by the French Minister for Culture and Communication, and in 2005 was appointed an Ambassador for the Hans Christian Andersen Foundation in Copenhagen.

DR. ILONA BONIWELL

Ilona Boniwell, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in Positive Psychology at the University of East London, UK. She is the Programme Leader for the first Masters Degree in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) in Europe. Her main teaching expertise lies in the area of positive psychology, which she teaches to undergraduates, MAPP and other postgraduate students. Her research interests include: subjective time use, time perspective, conceptions of well-being, coaching and applications of positive psychology to one-to-one work and education. She is the Vice-Chair of the newly created International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA). Ilona founded and was the first Chair of the European Network of Positive Psychology (ENPP), and is currently the member of its Steering Committee. She also organised the first European Congress of Positive Psychology in June 2002 (Winchester). She acted as the main consultant for the BBC2 series "The Happiness Formula" (2006) and is the author of Positive Psychology in a Nutshell (2006).

DR. JUDY WILLIS , M.D., M.Ed.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa as the first woman graduate from Williams College, Judy Willis attended UCLA School of Medicine where she was awarded her medical degree. She remained at UCLA and completed a medical residency and neurology residency, including chief residency. She practiced neurology for fifteen years before returning to university to obtain her Teaching Credential and Masters of Education from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has taught in elementary, middle, and graduate schools and currently teaches at Santa Barbara Middle School. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) published her first book for education professionals, Research-Based Strategies To Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist/Classroom Teacher, in August of 2006 and second book, Brain-Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom, in May 2007. These will be followed in April 2008 by Dr. Willis' third book focusing on brain research-based strategies for teaching reading and comprehension. Dr. Willis' first book for parents, Parent Power for Student Success: A parent guide to raising smarter children by a neurologist and classroom teacher, will be released by Sourcebooks this fall. She is completing a fourth book ASCD book about research-based strategies for math instruction and a book for Gifted Potentials Press about teaching middle school students with research-based gifted learning strategies. Dr. Willis is a presenter at educational conferences nationally and internationally in the field of learning-centered brain research and classroom strategies derived from this research. She has been selected to be a Distinguished Lecturer at the ASCD national conference in March 2008. Dr. Willis writes extensively for professional educational journals and was honored as a 2007 Finalist for Distinguished Achievement Award for her educational writing by the Association for Educational Publishers. Dr. Willis is a research consultant and member of the board of directors for the Hawn Foundation, an international foundation developed and directed by Goldie Hawn to develop and implement evidence-based mindfulness education programs through collaboration with learning theorists, educators, scientists, and professionals. She is on the Management Team of the First Move Program a foundation that provides teacher instruction in the use of chess as learning tool to teach higher level thinking skills, advance math and reading ability, and build self-esteem in elementary school students, sponsored by America's Foundation for Chess. Dr. Willis has worked with Laureate Education, Inc. appearing in a series of video-lessons using her RAD brain research-derived teaching strategies for graduate level teacher education and leadership training. When not teaching, writing, consulting, or making presentations, Dr. Willis is a home winemaker and writes a weekly wine column.

DR. DAVID CHAN

David Chan is Professor of Psychology and Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the Singapore Management University. He has published extensively in the areas of industrial and organizational psychology, research methods, measurement of attitudes, and adaptation to changes at work. Dr. Chan has received several prestigious scholarly awards including the Distinguished Early Career Contributions Award, William Owens Scholarly Achievement Award, and Edwin Ghiselli Award for Innovative Research Design from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Dissertation Research Award from the American Psychological Association. In 2000, he was ranked 9th in the list of Top 100 most published researchers of the 1990’s in the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He currently serves as Senior Editor of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Associate Editor of the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and editorial board member for several journals such as Personnel Psychology, Human Performance, and Organizational Research Methods. He is currently an elected Representative-at-Large Member of the Executive Committee of the Research Methods Division, Academy of Management. He is consultant to the Singapore Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, the Singapore Police Force, the Singapore Prison Service, and other public and private sector organizations in Singapore and United States. He is also Chairman of the International Advisory Panel to the Singapore’s National Addictions Management Center and National Council on Problem Gambling, member of the research advisory panel to the National Youth Council, and member of a panel that advises the Singapore Government on social science research issues. Together with scholars such as Nobel Laureate Dr. Daniel Kahneman and well-being researcher Dr. Ed Diener, Dr, Chan is currently on an international committee formed to help develop measures of national well-being. 

DR. PAUL ROZIN

Paul Rozin holds a PhD. in biology and psychology from Harvard University.  He is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and is an active member of the Positive Psychology Center.  He has over 250 publications, with major interests in food choice in a cultural context, lay beliefs about food and health, attitudes to “natural,” positive psychology, disgust and contagion, the psychology of music and literature, and ethnopolitical conflict. He was the recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 2007. He is particularly interested in combining evolutionary and cultural approaches to the understanding of how humans function. 

PHILIP MERRY

Founder and CEO – Global Leadership Academy
Philip Merry has for 30 years conducted consulting, training and coaching/counseling projects in leadership, team development and cross cultural dynamics in 47 countries. His global reputation for delivering outstanding results means that he is in constant demand by some of the world’s leading organisations – including the United Nations. He is especially sought after for his work in helping different cultures discover how they can work effectively together – helping explore what it is in their cultural values makes them happy or unhappy. Philip understands the importance of mindset and the interpersonal issues of well-being in family life and organisations – he originally trained and practiced as a marriage and family therapist before moving into leadership and team consulting. He is certified in Culture, Team and Brain Dominance profiling. Philip is English by birth – from Yorkshire – and has lived in Singapore since 1990.