Our Mission

Our mission is to contribute to the transformation of economies and societies so that the happiness of people, the well-being of communities and the sustainability of ecosystems is the primary aim of governance, enterprise and people.

Our Purpose

We energize and inspire people and organizations to engage in the happiness movement.
We provide tools, resources, and knowledge for a new paradigm for happiness encompassing well-being and sustainability.
We collaborate at the local and global level to create leadership in the happiness movement.

TAKE THE HAPPINESS INDEX SURVEY

Our Vision

We envision a world where all beings flourish.

Our Origins

We got our start in 2010, as a project of Sustainable Seattle, world renown for being, the first nonprofit to create regional sustainability indictors through a community-based approach. The Happiness Index was Sustainable Seattle’s fifth set of sustainability indicators, a departure from previous approaches in taking subjective indicator approach. The Happiness Index is based on Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index, with permission from high level governmental officials.  In 2011, the Seattle City Government joined Somerville Maine as being the first two cities in the USA to measure happiness and use the data. In Seattle, the Seattle City Council used our Happiness Index data, provided through the 2011 Seattle Area Happiness Initiative report, to make budgeting decisions. By 2012, cities and communities across the USA were using the Happiness Index, and in Seattle, still part of Sustainable Seattle, the Happiness Alliance worked with refugee and immigrant communities to measurable assess social justice and racial inequality with the support of the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.  In 2012, the Happiness Alliance became its own nonprofit, with the blessing of Sustainable Seattle’s board of directors, because of the spreading use of the Happiness Index across the globe.  Our project, Planet Happiness was launched in 2018 as the first to bring the Happiness Movement to the tourism sector.  

Our Values

Community
Connection
Collaboration 
Caring 

The People at the Happiness Alliance 

Rhonda Phillips, PhD, President of the Board of Directors

Rhonda is the President of Chatham University. She served as Dean of the Honors College at Purdue University, where she oversaw the growth of the college into over a thousand students. She also served as Dean at Barrett Honors College as well as Director and Professor at Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Rhonda co-founded the Springer’s International Journal of Community Well-Being, the first journal to focus on community well-being. Rhonda is a three-time Fulbright recipient, a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and recipient of the 2012 International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies' Distinguished Research Fellow. She is author or editor of 29 academic books and multiple scholarly articles. Phillips holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning and a M.S. in economics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as a M.S. in economic development and B.S. in geography from the University of Southern Mississippi.

Clinton Bliss, MD, Member of the Board of Directors

Clinton is a rural emergency room doctor and urban family practice provider with over twenty-five years’ experience in hospital administration, family/primary medicine and emergency medicine. He was trained in the bio-psycho-social model and takes a holistic and comprehensive approach to allopathic medicine. His experience includes Acting Chief of Staff Director of Emergency Services at VA hospitals and Director of Emergency Department Quality Assurance, and Chair Family Practice Quality Assistance Committee at HMOs. Clinton earned his medical degree at UCLA, School of Medicine and served his residency at the University of Washington.

Bogdana Rakova, Treasurer of the Board of Directors

Bogdana Rakova (Bobi) is a data scientist at the Responsible AI team at Accenture and a research fellow at Partnership on AI. She served as a research engineer at the Think Tank Team innovation lab at Samsun Research and for the Assembly: Ethics and Governance of AI program, a collaboration between the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and the MIT Media Lab, and as chief editor for the International Journal of Community Well-being’s special edition Intersections of AI and Community Well-being. She is a Connected Devices fellow at the California-based Venture Capital firm Amplified Partners. Bogdana is a member of the first cohort of graduates from Singularity University and subsequently held a teaching fellowship there where she designed and taught educational workshops.

James Bradbury, PhD, Emeritus of the Board of Directors

James is a retired physics researcher who worked at Palo Alto Research Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory leading the first research project on cold fusion for energy and later leader of one of the first physics research projects in the US to conduct cancer radiotherapy. With the ending of the cold war, He worked with Russian physicists on peaceful medical and energy research. His served as instructor at the University of New Mexico and College of Santa Fe teaching its first global issues course. He served on the board of Lone Star Africa Works to develop sustainable business programs empowering women, helped the Oppenheimer Institute for Science and International Cooperation develop educational programs, and contributes to climate change policy in New Mexico. James hold a PhD in physics from Stanford University. ​

Laura Musikanski, JD/MBA, Executive Director 

Laura is the executive director of the Happiness Alliance. She is lead author of the Happiness Policy Handbook and a course book Happiness, Well-Being and Sustainability: A Course in Systems Change , the first of their kind and has authored multiple scholarly and popular articles. She served as the chair of IEEE 7010 Working Group to create the world’s first standard for AI and well-being metrics. Laura holds a Juris Doctor, MBA and certificates in environmental management and law from the University of Washington (her version of an education in sustainability before universities offered sustainability degrees) and is a member of the Washington State Bar Association.

Our Partners