Who We Are - World Happiness Foundation

Inspiring people worldwide

Welcome to The World Happiness Foundation

Patronage and Board members

Luis Gallardo

Founder & President

Luis is a social innovator and entrepreneur with the higher purpose of elevating the vibration of the planet by developing ideas, connecting thought leaders, activists and communities and increasing awareness on the science of happiness, holistic education and smart innovation. For Luis Happiness is a human right and a life choice, an enabler of human development and social innovation.

Vandana Shiva

Advisory Board Member

Dr. Vandana Shiva is trained as a Physicist and did her Ph.D. on the subject “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory” at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India. In 1982, she left to set up her Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in her home town of Dehra Dun in the foothills of the Himalaya.

Satinder Singh Rekhi

Founding Board Member

Rekhi is a champion in teaching and spreading Happiness and Well- Being and strongly believes in a simple motto – Happy People Are More Successful. In fact, Mr. Rekhi is known for partnering with premier educational institutions by partnering with them in preaching the Science of Happiness, where the primary objective is to teach the importance of happiness – to enable them to be happier, and in turn be more successful.

Philip Kotler

Advisory Board Member

He has been honored as one of the world’s leading marketing thinkers. He received his M.A. degree in economics (1953) from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. degree in economics (1956) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and has received honorary degrees from 22 universities including Stockholm University, the University of Zurich, Athens University of Economics and Business, Budapest School of Economics and Administrative Science, the Kracow School of Business and Economics, and DePaul University.

Zahra Karsan

Advisory Board Member

Certified in Mindset Coaching, Positive Psychology and Neuroscience, Zahra is a trusted Success Coach to dozens of global executives and a Public Speaker. She is the best selling author of How Do You TAKE YOUR HAPPY? and is the creator of the REWIRE System, a groundbreaking methodology that retrains your brain for greater happiness and success. Her company, GetZEND, offers a suite of products that include online video training and the award winning GetZENd App to help you stay on track with your goals.

Thakur S. Powdyel

Advisory Board Member

Former Minister of Education in Bhutan. Thakur S Powdyel is an educator by choice, conviction and passion. His abiding interests include, inter alia, education as the noble sector, institutional integrity, national self-respect, gross national happiness, environment and sustainable development. My Green School: An Outline reflects his vision of holistic education as an instrument for human and societal flourishing, and is translated into several languages worldwide.

Saamdu Chetri

Advisory Board Member

Dr. Saamdu played a great role in consolidating the Swiss development support program in Bhutan, balancing both hardware (constructing aesthetically based training institute, colleges, hospital, research centres) and software programs (Human Resource and Training). As well expanding several programs to the national level in Education, Renewable Natural Resources, Rural Infrastructure.

Jennifer Price

Advisory Board Member

Jennifer is a top-ranking Real Estate Producer at Berkshire Hathaway EWM Realty in Miami, FL where she has been recognized with several awards for her impressive sales and premier service to the industry. She attributes her success to her immense passion for enriching the lives of those who put their trust in her. Formerly the Director of International Sales at The Biltmore Hotel and Director of Sales for US and Europe at America Economia Magazine, By nature, she is a giver and connector with the purpose of helping and inspiring those around her.

Manas Mandal

Advisory Board Member

Dr. Manas K Mandal is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, IISC, Bangalore. He was formerly a Distinguished Scientist and Director-General - Life sciences in DRDO, India. He holds a Ph.D. degree in psychology from Calcutta University, India; completed his post-doctoral research as Fulbright Fellow, USA, & a NSERC Fellow, Canada. As a visiting faculty, Dr. Mandal completed his tenure at Harvard University, USA; Kyushu University, Japan; & Aachen University, Germany.

Raj Raghunathan

Advisory Board Member

Raj Raghunathan is the Zale Centennial Professor of Business at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is interested in exploring how people’s judgments and decisions impact their happiness and fulfillment. Raj’s work has appeared in both scientific journals like The Journal of Consumer Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes and The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and in mass media outlets like The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Inc, and Fast Company.

Aneel Chima

Advisory Board Member

Aneel Chima, PhD, is director of the Division of Health and Human Performance and of the Stanford Flourishing Project. His teaching and research aims to answer the questions, "What does it mean to flourish as human beings in an age of hyper-complexity?" and "What is the future of human flourishing as cultural and life rhythms increasingly accelerate?" He is co-founder and managing partner of AT THE CORE, a consulting boutique specializing in facilitating transformative change through enhancing the emotional, social, and neurophysiological drivers of team and leadership thriving.

Yogesh Kochhar

Advisory Board Member

Yogi has had 30 years of experience spanning continents (the UK, the US, and Asia), serving diverse sectors in various profiles. His last assignment was with Microsoft India as part of their leadership team. He is the founder of YourOneLife which is a unique, first-of-its-kind, compelling happiness app. It granularities happiness in an objective. The app has been approved by the higher education regulator in India and is being rolled out to impact 8 million students. YourOneLife has been acknowledged by UN-SDSN Europe as a notable initiative.

Paul Atkins

Advisory Board Member

He is a Visiting Associate Professor with the Crawford School of Public Policy (Australian National University) where he teaches leadership and organisational behaviour. His research has focused on the interventions to reduce stress while enhancing relationships, wellbeing, perspective taking and cooperation in groups and organisations. Paul is a registered organisational psychologist with a PhD in Psychology from Cambridge University.

Rosalinda Ballesteros

Advisory Board Member

“In 2012, we started looking at a new educational model. We asked what was most important to students, parents and employers, and what they wanted in their lives. The answer was to be happy, to have happy kids or happy employees. We thought as a university we should approach the topic in a very serious way,” shares Rosalinda Ballesteros Valdes, Vice President of High School Programs for Universidad TecMilenio. After one phone call from the Provost to Martin Seligman, MAPP’s Education Director James Pawelski was soon on a plane to Monterrey to consult with her team.

Berry Liberman

Advisory Board Member

Berry Liberman is the co-founder and Creative Director of Small Giants, the Publisher and Editor of Dumbo Feather magazine and a mum to the three cutest kids in the world. Small Giants was founded in 2007 to create, support, nurture and empower businesses that are contributing to the world in a meaningful way. Dumbo Feather is a labour of love. Designed, edited and printed in Melbourne, Australia, it is a quarterly journal highlighting the stories of extraordinary people, living lives of passion and commitment to changing the world we live in.

Daniel Almagor

Advisory Board Member

Daniel Almagor is CEO of Small Giants, a company he started with his wife, Berry Liberman, to effect social and environmental change through business, and Australia's first B Corporation. He is also the founding Chairman of the Impact Investment Group, a finance vehicle for B corporations and other like minded businesses. He was the inaugural Social Entrepreneur in Residence at RMIT, the founder and former CEO of Engineers Without Borders Australia, Chairperson of Jewish Aid Australia and on the wisdom council for Hub Melbourne.

Mohit Mukherjee

Advisory Board Member

Mohit is the founding Director of Centre for Executive Education. He has also served as Vice President of Programs for Watson U, the first incubator leading to a degree for next generation social entrepreneurs. Prior to these positions, Mohit Mukherjee served as Education Program Manager of the Earth Charter Initiative, a global movement of organizations and individuals promoting sustainable development.

Loretta Breuning

Advisory Board Member

Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay. She is the author of many personal development books, including Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin and Endorphin Levels. As a teacher and a parent, she was not convinced by prevailing theories of human motivation. Then she learned about the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals and everything made sense.

Mavis Tsai

Advisory Board Member

Is a clinical psychologist and senior research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for Science of Social Connection. She is the co-creator of Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP), a treatment that harnesses the power of the therapeutic relationship to transform clients’ lives. She is a recipient of Washington State Psychological Association’s Distinguished Psychologist Award in recognition of significant contributions to the field of psychology, and is a Fellow of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science.

Tia Kansara

Advisory Board Member

A multi-award-winning entrepreneur and economist. The youngest to ever receive the Royal Institute British Architects honorary fellowship, she is the co-founder of Kansara Hackney Ltd, the first ISO-certified sustainable lifestyle consultancy, and CEO of Replenish Earth Ltd, a cause and a collective action to protect the global commons. Hailed amongst the Top 100 most influential leaders in Tech by the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards, her clients include Coca Cola, Bloomberg, the European Commission, Forbes, Formula One, MIT, and Siemens.

Nichol Bradford

Advisory Board Member

Nichol Bradford is fascinated by human potential, and has always been interested in how technology can help individuals expand beyond their perceived limits to develop and transform themselves to the highest level. She spent the last decade exploring these ideas in the online game industry, serving as a senior executive with responsibility for strategy, operations and marketing for major brands that include: Activision Blizzard, Disney, and Vivendi. Now, as the CEO of the Willow Group, Nichol is applying those same skills to the realm of elevating psychological well-being.

Valerie Freilich

Advisory Board Member

She is a Global Executive and Leadership coach and an Awareness Courage and Love Leader for the ACL Global project. A lifelong experiential learner she is bringing 25 years of wisdom to Organizations in developing individual and collective leadership and caring capacities to thrive in challenging and complex environments. She works for a broad spectrum of industries including Finance, Healthcare, Tech Education, Luxury brands, Media. She is an Ashridge coach (UK) and an Advisory board member for the Executive Women’s Leadership Program at Florida International University (FIU)

Deepak Ohri

Advisory Board Member

Founder and CEO of lebua Hotels and Resorts is well-known worldwide as an award-winning entrepreneur who has transformed the luxury hospitality landscape in Asia. He was the first to create the world's highest rooftop restaurant that has earned two 2 Michelin stars and the first to develop the concept of a vertical destination. Executive in Residence in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Chairman of Executive Board at Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at FIU. In March 2022, Mr. Ohri joined CIBER Advisory Board.

Edith Shiro

Advisory Board Member

Dr. Edith Shiro is a Clinical Psychologist and Co-founder of the Trauma and Resilience Center, with a private practice in Miami, Florida, where she specializes in trauma, post-traumatic stress, and post-traumatic growth. Recognized as an expert in the field of post-traumatic growth, Dr. Shiro regularly speaks at large international conferences, universities, schools, and community centers, and is a regular on TV and radio. Author of The Trampoline Effect (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Vibha Tara

Advisory Board Member

Vibha works globally for emotional and spiritual intelligence, primarily to educate hearts. She considers humanity as her religion is and is on a joyful journey to raise consciousness of her BEING and DOING. Popularly known as Gratitude Champion,Vibha has more than 30 years of work life, out which first half has ‘Heart and Head’ work, in social development sector, in the areas of Public Health, Education and Governance, with United Nations, Population Services International and Johns Hopkins University in India and assignments in the USA, Russia, Netherlands, Myanmar, Thailand, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. Since 2007, Vibha's focus is on ‘Heart and Spirit’ based work, by conducting Gratitude Joyshops, Organization Happiness and Holistic well-being through her non-profit Muskaan (Smile). She is also nurturing her recently launched socio-spiritual intervention [email protected], in a village near Lucknow, India. A practitioner of Vipaasana, mindful living, wisdom of Advait, Vibha undertakes road trips (Shukriyasafar) anchored in gratitude and kindness.

Nancy Richmond

Advisory Board Member

Dr. Nancy Richmond is a recognized keynote speaker, university educator, and business consultant. She is a faculty member at Florida International University’s College of Business for the Department of Marketing and Logistics. Her specialization is in social media, marketing, wellbeing, and innovating in a digital world. She is a social media expert and influencer with over 300,000+ followers. As a professor and consultant, she has helped thousands of individuals and companies in the areas of social media, leadership development, and digital innovation from around the globe. Dr. Richmond tackles problems holistically and creates transformative solutions with advanced degrees in marketing, counseling, and education. She is well-known for being a people connector and giving presentations that will inspire you to take your goals to the next level. Her research is on social media, wellbeing, and digital education. Dr. Richmond is a strong advocate for using social skills, innovation, and technology to help promote community building, social good, and sustainability.

Sungu Armagan

Advisory Board Member

Dr. Sungu Armagan is an Associate Teaching Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Global Leadership and Management Department in the College of Business at FIU. She is the creator of the popular undergraduate course titled “Happiness at Work” in the College of Business. She also teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Organizational Behavior, Negotiations, International Business Negotiations, and Professional Skill Development. Her research is in the areas of happiness at work and group decision-making, including negotiations. She provides training and workshops to professionals on personal happiness, workplace happiness, and executive negotiations. She is the Faculty Advisor for AIESEC FIU; AIESEC is a global platform for young people to develop their leadership potential through international internships and teaching opportunities.

Rolando Gadala-Maria

Advisory Board Member

Rolando is the Founder and CEO of Visage Capital Group with more than 35 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur with a strong unique set of skills and experience in founding new businesses, investing and restructuring existing businesses, Mergers, Acquisitions, business strategies, and business growth models. Rolando sits on the boards of several corporations as well as non-profit organizations. Rolando is the author of "Awakened Leaders", a leadership mentoring program that has earned credentials from IESE Business School, Spain, transforming corporate and community leaders to become highly empowered to impact positively their business growth, their families, and their communities. He has been a guest speaker at several national and international organizations including the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Young Presidents Organization (YPO), and Universities, among others. Rolando is also a pro-bono mentor of startups at Singularity University helping them achieve successful and sustainable business models to achieve exponential growth. He is also an active member of YPO where he served as Chair for YPO Gold Latin America (Young Presidents Organization) and was a board member on the international board of WPO (World Presidents Organization).

To reach our goal of #10billionhappyby2050 we have estimated that 25 million changemakers, including educators, health professionals, business leaders and government officials must positively impact 400 people each in their lifetime. It is 2020 now. We have 30 years to achieve our goal.

We can do it

Our Theory of Change

"On our pathway to fundamental peace: Freedom, consciousness and happiness become the key pillars of our evolution.”

The most comprehensive global platform that hosts and amplifies the leaders, institutions, and initiatives committed to realizing a world where all people are free, conscious and happy.

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Educators

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Health Professionals

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Business & Goverment Leaders

All we need is 1% of the population to join us in our mission. Are you in?

To achieve this we:

Our 2021-2022 Goals

Provide Access

Provide you with access to the latest innovations, initiatives, policies, experiences, research, technology, and tools that are positively changing the way we feel, understand, and act.

Advocate

To advocate for and equip purpose driven organizations with the resources to create workplace happiness culture and well-being.

Integration

To champion the integration of new Happiness Curriculums in Educational Institutions.

Support

To advocate for and support Governments in their initiatives to include Gross Global Happiness (GGH) as a measure of societal well-being.

Create environment

To create a conducive environment for advocacy for Gross Global Happiness.

Build global awareness

To build Global awareness of the work of individuals, organizations and institutions in the field of Happiness and Well-Being.

Provide a platform

To provide a platform for knowledge and experience sharing in the field of Happiness and Well-Being.

Our Strategic Choices

Capacity building

Focus on capacity building through education, training and mentoring.

Advocacy

Focus on advocacy with government, legislatures and corporations for Gross Global Happiness and the inclusion of Happiness curriculums in education.

Choose high impact

Layer multiple interventions and projects in select countries based on overall goals, to maximize impact, optimize resources and build a conducive environment for advocacy.

Education

Pilot Project Happiness in the education sector in select countries, and generate evidence. Advocate for it and scale up in the next phase.

Walk the talk

Walk the talk! Introduce happiness and well-being initiatives for the Foundation’s team.

Foundation’s ecosystem

Focus on six components of the Foundation’s ecosystem – Academy, Public Policy, Fest, Awards, Observatory & Community.

Strategic marketing and partnerships

High visibility through strategic marketing and partnerships plan with the goal of reaching and impacting 10 billion people.

Academy

Learn More

Become an academy member

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Donate

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We are thrilled that you are here and that you want to bé a part of this movement for positive change.

It is clear that the world we live in is not the world any of us want to pass down to our children. There are growing inequalities, pandemics, sectarianism, environmental destruction, unrest, and a lot of unhappiness. However, at the World Happiness Foundation we believe that it is possible for us all to be free, conscious and happy. To do this, we must work together. That is why our entire ecosystem is built as a polycentric, interconnected network of government leaders, policymakers, researchers, educators, business leaders, artists, activists, and changemakers. Collectively we can realize the future of happiness through innovation, learning, cooperation, and the achievement of more effective, equitable, and sustainable societies.

Underpinning everything we do is something we call, bé. Bé represents what we consider to be the “life force energy” that acts as the guiding compass of The Foundation. By life force energy we mean vitality. We draw this concept from similar beliefs found in Eastern traditions, for example, Qi in Ancient Chinese Medicine, or Prana, in the Hindu yogic traditions. We believe that this vibrant “energy” is incredibly important to our existence as a Foundation because it acts as a through-line, holding all aspects of what we accomplish together under one lively spirit. It allows us to observe the changes we make over time and aligns us with our values.