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Webinars (or call it on-line talks!)

The Happiness Initiative also offers lectures and talks about the happiness movement and happiness initiative efforts across the nation. Learn more here. 

Join an On-Line Talk (Webinar) to Foster a Global Happiness and Wellbeing Movement. Dates and time of the monthly  webinars are below and you must register to receive an invitation. Talks are free but you must register. Please donate to support this work!

Webinars to Foster A Global Happiness and Wellbeing Movement- join us for these free on-line talks!

May 28th at 2 pm Pacific Time – A Progress Report on Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Policy

Registration URL: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6252095045439318784
Webinar ID: 108-700-259

John de Graaf, a co-founder of The Happiness Initiative, has recently returned from Bhutan, the birthplace of the concept of Gross National Happiness, where he participated in a conference with dozens of scholars from many countries who are trying to bring Bhutan’s message of sustainable happiness to the United Nations and the world.  John will report on this amazing meeting, his visits with the king, queen and prime minister of Bhutan and that nation’s ongoing efforts to get the rest of us to take happiness seriously!  John is also working with us on Pursuit of Happiness Day and Sustainable Happiness Week and will give a quick rundown on efforts underway around the US to promote a weeklong conversation about well-being in America.

June 25 at noon Pacific Time 2013.  Linda Wheatly and Paula Francis will speak about Gross National Happiness in state policy and personal action in Vermont. 

Registration URL: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/633758852783081984
Webinar ID: 108-995-259

Linda Wheatley is the Director of the Vermont Leadership Institute and Network at the Snelling Center for Government, a non-partisan, non-profit organization in Williston, Vermont. In 2009, following a visit to Bhutan for the fourth annual research conference on GNH, she co-founded Gross National Happiness USA (GNHUSA) with Tom Barefoot and Ginny Sassaman. GNHUSA’s aim is to increase well-being by measuring what matters. Our activities intend to inform, inspire and engage the public in the movement toward a well-being economy. GNHUSA worked with UVM’s Gund Institute and the non-profit Common Good to support the passage of related legislation in 2012, calling for the development of a Genuine Progress Indicator for Vermont. Vermont is the first state to pass such a bill. Linda has a small meaningful-travel company, Sweet Mango Tours LLC, served as Associate Peace Corps Director for the Peace Corps in Thailand, and coordinated the Vermont Prevention Institute and its Consultation Team for the Agency of Human Services. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in nutritional sciences. Her studies and her work have taken her all over the world. She especially enjoys the Buddhist cultures of Southeast Asia and the Himalaya.

August 2013 (time and day to be announced) Maarten Desmet, Archtech and Urban Planner with the University of Algemeen Belang will speak about happiness and sustainable development.

Learn more about the Global Happiness and Wellbeing movement launched at the United Nations. 

2013 Webinars:

April –  Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-In-Residence at the Post Carbon Institue and autor of 10 books including, The Post Carbon Reader (2010) (editor), Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (2009) , Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007) and The Party’s Over: Oil, War & the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003) gave a talk called Life After Growth: Building Community Resilience in a World of Declining Energy. Richard is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators. He has authored scores of essays and articles that have appeared in such journals as Nature, The American Prospect, Public Policy Research, Quarterly Review, The Ecologist, Resurgence, The Futurist, European Business Review, Earth Island Journal, Yes!, and The Sun; and on web sites such as EnergyBulletin.net, TheOilDrum.com, Alternet.org, ProjectCensored.com, and Counterpunch.com. Richard’s latest animation 300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Minutes , went viral on YouTube and won the Youtubes’s DoGooder Video of the Year Award.

About Richard’s talk: The world’s supplies of cheap, high-quality fossil fuels are depleting, leaving us with the options of expensive, low-quality hydrocarbons–or energy alternatives like solar and wind. None of these will be able to supply us with the quantity or quality of energy we are used to. How will we adapt our transport, food, finance and other essential societal systems to function in this new era of energy constraints? This talk will explore both the threats and the opportunities at our doorstep.

March 2013 Laura Musikanski, Executive Director of The Happiness Initiative spoke about happiness grassroots activism in the United States. Laura will speak about the work of Happiness Initiative, a project brining Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness philosophy in approachable and easy tools, including a subjective measure of well-being, anyone can use at any scale.

Feb. 2013 Mario Chamorro of The Happy Post Project gave a talk about grass roots activism, his organization and his path to happiness.  Mario’s bio in his own words: ”Currently I am the Executive Director for the Happy Post Project and the Make it Happy Foundation. I was born next to an active volcano in an awesome Colombian town called Pasto. In 2004, I left Bogota for Nantucket, RI with no money, no language skills, no friends, but a good cousin to crash with and a tourist attitude. My goal? To change the world. I made it through graduate school and work in New York City and back in Massachusetts. In my previous life–or now I say “lives”–I held several positions on Wall Street, worked as an energy consultant in Boston and organized anti-corruption programs in Colombia. I was also a valet parking attendant during long winters, waited tables in Mexican restaurants, sold cell phones in San Victorino-Bogota, and taught salsa and Spanish classes in Manhattan. Along the way, I’ve swapped stories with hippies, locals throughout three continents, former US presidents and even Nobel laureates, with whom once I shared the stage to give a speech in front of more than 3,000 people from upwards of 100 different nationalities. I’m a full time tourist who strongly believes that the power of happiness can improve anything in the world. I hold a degree in business administration from Colombia, a master’s degree in energy management from Columbia University, and used to live on Columbus Avenue in NYC. Truly Colombian, isn’t it?”

Jan. 2013 Tom Barefoot spoke about the use of happiness indicators in Vermont and GHNUSA.  Tom Barefoot is a founder and Co-Coordinator of Gross National Happiness USA (GNHUSA.org). GNHUSA seeks to educate and encourage the use of alternative indicators to measure what matters. Tom has been working to develop context, framing and language for GNH and cooperative ideas, leading workshops on the Biopsychology of Cooperation. Tom has been President of Universal Micro Systems, Inc. for 30 years and served 12 years on VPIRG’s Board, 5 years as President.

Jan. 2013 Jens Jerndal, Author, gave a talk “A Paradigm Shift for Global  Happiness.”  Jens Jerndal is a Swedish-born internationally recognized authority on the now occurring Paradigm Shift. He has authored four published books. He is a political scientist, economist, former diplomat, former investment counsellor and CEO, and a former professor of holistic medicine. Now he is an author, speaker, coach, consultant futurist and holistic philosopher. He is the father of three sons and the godfather of two girls and two boys. In 2003 Dr. Jens set up his headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but he continues to travel extensively all over the world. He now dedicates himself to writing and lecturing about the Paradigm Shift and the emerging Aquarian Paradigm.

2012 Webinars:
August 2012: Yamouna David, Director of EFACTS and co-founder of the International Happiness Observatory spoke about The first and second Seminar on Happiness in Sete, France. She will give an overview of the  happiness and wellbeing indicators and discussion of key points learned from the first seminar, and an explanation of the second Seminar.

September 2012: Jon Hall of the Human Development Report Office of UNDP who manages a team that supports countries working to produce their own national human development reports. talked about the need for subjective indicators of wellbeing. Before moving to New York he spent six years in Paris with the OECD, mainly managing The Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies. He organized both the Istanbul and Busan World Forums on Statistics, Knowledge Policy. He began working on measuring progress and development in 2000 at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, where he spent seven years, mainly leading a ground-breaking project to publish the first set of measures of Australia’s progress, a publication that went on to top the Bulletin magazine’s social category in their ‘Smart 100′ awards.  He has a degree in maths and a master’s degree in statistics from the UK and an executive masters in public service administration from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government. An Australian and British citizen, Jon has also worked for the British public service and for the World Food Program in Zambia.

October 2012:  Professor Lester Kurtz of George Mason University  talked about Social Movements will talk about deep listening and grassroots Global Happiness and Wellbeing Movement: what is needed now.  Lester Kurtz is professor of sociology at George Mason University, where he teaches social movements, conflict, comparative religions, and theory; he also lectures regularly at the European Peace University. He holds an M.A.R. from Yale and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, edited the 3-volume Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict (Elsevier) and co-edited Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell) and The Web of Violence (U. of Illinois). Other books include Gods in the Global Village (Sage), The Nuclear Cage (Prentice-Hall) and The Politics of Heresy (U. of California), which received the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion’s Distinguished Book Award. He is past chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Assoc. and the Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section of the American Sociological Assoc., which awarded him its Distinguished Career Award. He has lectured in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America and taught at the Univ. of Chicago, Northwestern Univ., Delhi Univ., and Tunghai Univ. He is currently writing Gods and Bombs: Religion and the Rhetoric of Violence and co-editing a book on The Paradox of Repression and a 2-volume work on Women, War, and Violence (Praeger).

November 15 at Noon PT: Mary Judd of Mary Judd Communications  talked to  the question “What’s happyning around the world? Creative strategies to bring happiness & well-being awareness to more people.”   Mary Judd Communications LLC provides writing, research, editorial, educational and other communications and programming needs to a colorful client list.  Clients have included various school districts in TX, CO, and NY; I LOVE NY Tourism; Saatchi & Saatchi; MentorCoach; HIH (Hendricks Investment Holdings – working with owner who is founder of the Discovery Channel); VIA Institute on Character, and Be An Artist – a cool program founded by singer songwriter, Darden Smith. Her extensive work with leaders in the field of Positive Psychology and character strengths research infuses much of her work — from workshops to interviews to consulting and individual coaching. She is  the author of The Stowaway Star — a growing series of children’s books designed to help kids (of any age) learn more about “what’s right with them” and how to maximize it. Each story contains beautiful illustrations by award-winning artist, Thomas Vroman, and includes an enrichment guide to encourage strengths discussions. She is also a producer of Music as Medicine, a project working to change veteran’s lives for the better in Austin, Texas.

December 5th at 9 am PT/Noon ET Dr. Alex Suarez gave a  presentation that aims at integrating different forms of happiness.  It will emphasize the short and long-term views of what makes us happy and what fools us into thinking we could be happy, but does not fully satisfy (hint: the stories we tell ourselves make a big difference).   The presentation will also review how the brain pathways for pleasure and yearning inform our choices, and how to work with expectations for happiness, so acute this season of the year. Dr. Alex Suarez is core faculty in the doctoral program in Psychology at Antioch University, Seattle.  She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Washington and also holds a post-doctoral masters in Clinical Psychopharmacology from Alliant University.  Dr. Suarez has also taught at the University of Washington, Argosy University, Seattle University and the National University of Mexico.  Dr. Suarez founded and directed the first Latin-American graduate program in Applied Behavioral Analysis.  She is also a founding member for the Washington School of Professional Psychology. She has been president of the Washington State Psychological Association, and has served as chair of the Psy.D. program at Antioch University Seattle.   She is interested in integrating a bio-psycho-social view in her work, and has worked extensively with international clients.

To access recordings of past talks, email info@happycounts.org