Well-Being in Higher Education

Associate Dean for Well-Being, University of Washington of School of Medicine

Founding Director, UW Resilience Lab & UW Resilience and Compassion Initiatives

Senior Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health with the Global Brain Health Institute at UC San Francisco and the Atlantic Institute, Oxford, England

Affilitate Assistant Professor, UW College of Education

Dr. Anne Browning’s research focuses on the ways internal psychological resources (e.g. self-compassion, resilience coping, psychological capital) buffer against adverse experiences and stressors. She is currently looking at the intersection of stress and emotion in our environments to better understand how to promote constructive engagement with colleagues, clients, and each other.  She looks at how skills, like emotional intelligence, can be best leveraged in corporate, academic, and medical settings to support connections, learning, and outcomes.  Dr. Browning leads efforts to both support individual and team skill acquisition and develop a strategic vision for broad culture change leveraging adaptive leadership models.  As the Founding Director of the UW Resilience Lab, she has developed and implemented resilience, compassion, and vulnerability programming and curricula for the UW community.  She now serves as the Associate Dean for Well-Being at the UW School of Medicine, an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the UW College of Education, and is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health with the Global Brain Health Institute at the University of California, San Francisco and the Atlantic Institute in Oxford, England. A two-sport athlete at Harvard University in soccer and rowing, she trained with the US Rowing National Team for several years before hanging up her oars to pursue a career in higher education.  She received her master’s in education from UC Berkeley and doctorate in leadership and policy studies from UW’s College of Education.

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Director, UW Resilience Lab

Megan Kennedy is the Director of the UW Resilience Lab. As a leader and facilitator, Kennedy aims to build healthy and compassionate learning communities. From engaging stakeholders in vision-setting to partnering with students, staff, and instructors, her approach to leadership centers on collaborative relationships. She believes that building high-quality wellness and educational programs requires teamwork at every level. Currently, Kennedy is developing and evaluating systems-based approaches to well-being that combines applied research, education, and collaborative programming across three University of Washington campuses. This includes partnering with academic departments, student wellness groups, and community-based organizations seeking to deepen their capacity for mindfulness and resilience. Kennedy earned her master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Science from Bastyr University and is a licensed therapist with over a decade of experience in public and private practice.

• Episode Transcription: Well-Being in Higher Education
• UW Resilience Lab
• Well-Being for Life & Learning Guidebook
• Be REAL Program
• The Engelhard Project for Connecting Life and Learning
• UW Medicine Peer to Peer Program
• Impact of Imposter Phenomenon with Tyra Fainstad, MD
• Strategies for Using the Learning Climate to Reduce Imposter Phenomenon with Addie McClintock, MD