Past Events

Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.

Psychotherapist, bestselling author, founder and executive director of The Center for Connection, and co-founder of The Play Strong Institute

Georgie Wisen-Vincent, LMFT

Nationally recognized play therapy expert and co-founder and head of faculty for the Play Strong Institute

Carly Andrews

Executive Director of The Alliance for Early Childhood

Naomi Watts

Academy Award-nominated actor and founder and chief creative officer of Stripes Beauty

Heidi Stevens

Chicago-based writer and Director of External Affairs for the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health

Sunita Sah, MD, Ph.D.

Associate Professor at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business

Ethan Kross, Ph.D.

Professor, Management & Organizations, Ross School of Business, and Director of the Emotion and Self Control Lab, University of Michigan

Kurt Gray, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Paul Bloom, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University

Jenny Anderson

Award-winning journalist, writer of the “How to Be Brave” Substack newsletter, and host of the LearnIt podcast.

Rebecca Winthrop, Ph.D.

Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and adjunct professor at Georgetown University

Charles Duhigg

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist.and New York Times bestselling author

Lauren Freeman, Ph.D.

Professor of Philosophy at University of Louisville and Director of the M.A. in Applied Philosophy

Heather Stewart, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University

Yolonda Wilson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Health Care Ethics at St. Louis University

Michael Norton, Ph.D.

Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Sam Sommers, Ph.D.

Professor and Chair in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Racial Equity and Diversity Lab at Tufts University

Alan Lightman, Ph.D.

Professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT and author of seven novels

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, Faculty Director of the Greater Good Science Center, and bestselling author

DeMar DeRozan

Six-time NBA All-Star and two-time gold medalist for the United States Men’s Basketball Team

Hanif Abdurraqib

New York Times bestselling poet, essayist, and cultural critic