IPPA Council of Advisors

She is the Founder & CEO of WOHASU® and the visionary behind the World Happiness Summit®—recognized by Forbes as one of the Top 5 Leadership Summits in the world. Through her work, she has established WOHASU as the world’s leading platform for advancing the science and practice of happiness, sparking a movement that continues to ripple across sectors and societies.

Karen is also the creator of the WOHASU® Wellbeing Leadership Certification—launched in the third-largest public school district in the U.S.—to empower leaders and educators with science-based tools to foster personal, organizational, and community flourishing. As a speaker and strategist, she has inspired audiences worldwide to embrace growth, purpose, connection, and human-centric leadership. She is the author of the internationally published book Cultivating Happiness: Overcoming Adversity to Create a Legacy of Wellbeing, available in English, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. She also founded the World Wellbeing Policy Forum, which gathers leaders to exchange evidence, shape policy, and advance the global wellbeing agenda, and she serves on the board of the World Wellbeing Movement.

Karen holds an MBA from Georgetown University and a Master’s in Communications from the University of Miami. She coaches C-suite executives and is a TEDx speaker whose work has been featured by CNN, BBC, The Financial Times, SXSW, Univision, FastCompany, and other global media outlets. She has collaborated with leading organizations like Gallup, PwC, Deloitte, DHL Express, Hyatt and more. Fluent in English and Spanish, she is passionate about positive transformational change, women’s wellbeing, and advocating for the health of present and future generations

John F. Helliwell, of the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia, is Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and Co-Director of CIFAR’s program on ‘Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being’. Recent books include Well-Being for Public Policy (OUP, with Diener, Lucas and Schimmack, 2009), International Differences in Well-Being (OUP, edited with Diener and Kahneman, 2010), and five editions, 2012-2017, of the World Happiness Report (edited with Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs).

She has also been appointed as Chair of the Excellence in Leadership and Teaching Council for the Association of Independent Schools of NSW (AISNSW) in Australia.

Anne holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws (with Honours) degree, a Graduate Diploma in Education, and a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She was the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship during which she explored strategies to foster resilience in learning while based at Cambridge University in England. Anne is currently completing a PhD in education with a focus on wellbeing through the University of Melbourne.

In Australia, Anne has been recognised multiple times for her entrepreneurial impact in designing and implementing innovative positive education experiences, along with her exceptional educational leadership including The Educator Most Influential Educator Award (2023), The Educator Hot List (2022, 2023), and an Excellence Award in The Educator Australian Education 2022 Awards for Principal of the Year. Under Anne’s leadership, Ravenswood has been recognised as The Educator Innovative School of the Year five times (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023).

In 2019, Anne was the only female to be recognised internationally for her pioneering contribution and leadership in the field of Positive Education at the Positive Education Global Summit in Philadelphia hosted the Eisenhower Fellowships and Positive Psychology Centre, University of Pennsylvania.

Hans Henrik Knoop is Associate Professor with distinction, Director of the Positive Psychology Research Unit at Aarhus University, Denmark, and Extraordinary Professor, North West University, South Africa. His work is focused on flourishing in education, work, and society with a strong interdisciplinary approach. His research within positive psychology has involved thousands of educators and leaders and data on well-being from almost 300,000 Danish pupils. At Aarhus University he co-directs the Master Program of Positive Psychology with almost 600 students enrolled since 2011, and has hosted international conferences relating to education and positive psychology in Denmark in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2017. He was the President of the European Network for Positive Psychology from 2010 to 2014 and served on the IPPA Board of Directors from 2009 to 2016. He was the host of the 5th ECPP in Copenhagen in 2010, and coresponsible for 6th ECPP in Moscow in 2012, and the 7th ECPP in Amsterdam in 2014. From 2007 to 2011 he was Research Director at the Universe Research Lab in Denmark heading a team of researchers focusing on combined engagement, excellence, and ethics in education, involving approximately 10.000 pupils, 1.500 teachers and 150 school leaders. From 2006-2009 he was academically responsible for the TV-program Plan B and follow-ups – focused on bringing positive psychology to bear on pupils with reading difficulty. The first series of the program ran for six weeks and reached a prime-time viewer share of one third of all Danes watching television, received the second highest viewer rating in the history of the TV-channel TV2 (Denmark’s largest at the time), with the first episode nominated for a Golden Rose in Montreux. From 1996 to 2010 he was heading the Nordic Branch of The GoodWork Project led by peers Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon with comprehensive in-depth interviewing regarding excellence, engagement, and ethics, as understood by Nordic educators, leaders, journalists, and politicians including a European Commissioner, a Prime Minister and four other ministers. He has authored and co-authored more than 200 publications including 9 books. He has delivered more than thousand invited keynotes and lectures in Denmark and at conferences in Australia, Austria, Croatia, China, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Slovenia, Spain, The Philippines, the U.K. and the U.S, and is a frequent commentator in newspapers, radio and television on matters of learning, creativity, ethics, and positive psychology.

Richard Layard is an economist who thinks there is more to happiness than just the economy. In 2005 he wrote the best-selling book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, translated into 20 languages, and in 2014 a follow-up on mental health called Thrive. He has had huge influence in making psychological therapy more widely available in Britain’s National Health Service. But most important of all he is co-founder of Action for Happiness, an international movement to promote a happier way of living.

Charles Martin-Krumm is an elected member of the Board of Directors of the IPPA (International Positive Psychology Association), Master of Conference at STAPS, Professor of Physical and Sports Education and Sports Trainer. He is a Full Professor at the Ecole de Psychologues Praticiens de Paris, Director of the VCR research team and IPPA Fellow. His research focus on the study of processes in which optimism can be implicated in the contexts of education and sport. His works concern the study of interactions between optimism and various affective, cognitive, or behavioral variables.

Helena Agueda Marujo is a Professor at Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Politicas (School of Social and Political Sciences), University of Lisbon, where she co-coordinates the Executive Master on Applied Positive Psychology and is a member of the research Center CAPP. She served in the scientific committees of the 1st and 2nd IPPA World Congresses, and the Positive Nations Conference (the 1st Portuguese Positive Psychology conference). She co-wrote seven books on Positive Psychology, namely one volume entitled “Positive Nations and Communities” (Springer). Helena is also an IPPA board member and President of the Portuguese Association of Positive Psychology (APPEIP).

Jeanne Nakamura is Associate Professor of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University. She received her B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is cofounder with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of the positive psychology concentration and the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont and is a past member of the board of the International Positive Psychology Association. She helped direct the Good Work Project, a series of studies of excellence and social responsibility in professional life. She investigates positive psychology in a lifespan developmental context, including vital engagement and creativity, mentoring and good work, and aging well. She is the coauthor of Good Mentoring and Creativity and Development and coeditor of Applied Positive Psychology. Her current writing and research address motivation and engagement in adulthood, the formative influences of mentoring and the formation of good mentors, and social innovation after sixty as a model for positive aging.

Ryan is an award-winning psychologist, certified coach, annual instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, special guest faculty at 5 coaching and positive psychology institutes, and author of 11 books, 90+ academic papers, and several-hundred user-friendly articles. His books include the bestselling consumer book, The Power of Character Strengths, the popular stress workbook The Strengths-Based Workbook for Stress Relief, the 2020 workbook The Positivity Workbook for Teens, and Positive Psychology at the Movies. He’s also author of the two leading practitioner-focused books in positive psychology – Character Strengths Interventions and Mindfulness and Character Strengths. The latter book contains the evidenced-based program he founded, Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP), used by practitioners across the globe. He has led numerous mindfulness and/or spirituality retreats, dating back about 20 years.

Ryan has been interviewed by a number of luminaries including the legendary Larry King in 2020. He’s given nearly 1,000 presentations on positive psychology topics, including a character strengths world tour in 2009-2010, a TEDx talk in 2017, a speaking tour of Australia, a keynote at a Harvard conference, and invited presentations at conferences across the globe. He is Fellow of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) and serves on their Council of Advisors. He is currently co-founder and president of the Spirituality/Meaning Division of IPPA.

Ryan lives in Cincinnati with his wife and three young, zestful children. His highest strengths are hope, love, honesty, fairness, spirituality, curiosity, and appreciation of beauty. He’s an avid chess player, zealot of Michigan State University, super-fan of The Walking Dead, and a collector of vintage/rare Pez dispensers.