LU HANESSIAN

Lu Hanessian is a biopsychosocial educator, multidisciplinary program designer, trauma-informed healing-centered practitioner, adjunct professor, and facilitator across sectors with companies, organizations, non-profits, educational institutions, and communities. Her work draws from a unique integration of interpersonal neurobiology, traumatic stress studies, attachment and affective neuroscience, the science of embodied safety and somatics, expressive healing arts, conflict transformation, in contexts of resistance, adversity, resilience, and growth.

 

As an adjunct professor at NYU New York University's Center for Global Affairs and Kroc School for Peace and Justice Studies/SOLES School for leadership and Education Sciences at the University of San Diego, Lu designs and teaches graduate courses on the foundations in trauma literacy; the science and practice of stress resilience; trauma-informed, healing-centered education and leadership; the neuroscience of conflict and emotion; and applied trauma-informed global fieldwork.

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Lu is an award-winning journalist, author, former NBC network anchor and Discovery Health Channel host, as well as host of more than thirteen shows, with more than 25 years of national and international broadcast journalism experience. As a veteran journalist, Lu's work also centers media literacy and the "neuroethics of news." In this domain, she teaches, trains, and consults on news literacy, trauma-sensitive reporting, and stress resilience, through a lens of trauma-informed journalism.

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For more than a decade, Lu has designed and led workshops and retreat experiences for women around themes of mind-body resilience, harnessing the wisdom of the mind-body, making sense of our stories, and cultivating courage, wisdom, and wellbeing.

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Since 2010, Lu has been the founder and executive director of Parent2ParentU, an online educational resource and community supporting parents and families, through strengths-based education, grounded in attachment science, interpersonal neurobiology, developmental and affect psychology, neurodiversity, and the science of embodied safety and relational resilience.

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Her upcoming book Return to Tender describes the generative, reparative power of parent-child connection, and Practice Makes Present is a stress resilience field guide to the science and practice of presence. She has written and published two illustrated books, for parents, The Garden: A Parenting Parable and for children, Picnic on a Cloud, brought to visual life by artist Tanya Leonello. 

 

Her articles and essays have been published in The New York Times, Mindful, Mothering, USA Today, and more. She has been a guest on CNN, NPR, MSNBC, Today, The View, and a frequent guest expert regarding education, youth, and wellbeing on Positively America and 77 WABC radio with Ernie Anastos.

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Lu is a longtime musician, songwriter, and singer, composer of two musicals and a lullaby album for new mothers. She is the host and executive producer of a podcast series called "The Foreseeable Now."

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