LU HANESSIAN

Lu Hanessian works as a biopsychosocial trauma resilience educator, consultant, adjunct professor, researcher, and facilitator working across sectors with companies, non-profits, educational institutions, individuals, and communities, based on what she refers to as a "first do no harm beginning with ourselves" approach to practitioner support and sustainability in the field.

 

Lu designs, facilitates, and teaches interdisciplinary programs, courses, workshops and trainings, drawing from an integration of interpersonal neurobiology; trauma and resilience sciences; mind-body restorative processes; cognitive and emotion sciences; the neuropsychology of conflict and connection-centered conflict resolution; stress resilience and adaptive leadership; the 'neuro-resilience' of story and expressive arts as pathways to healing and transformative change.

 

As an adjunct professor, Lu designs and teaches graduate college courses, certificate programs, workshops and trainings including the science and practice of stress resilience; foundations in trauma awareness and resilience; the neuroscience of conflict and emotion; and trauma-informed fieldwork through a peace and justice studies lens, rooted in community engagement, experiential practice, and transformative learning.

 

As an independent researcher, Lu is exploring the reciprocal dynamics of adversity and resilience, co-regulation, emotional agility, and growth, how agency invites new narratives and meaning-making, and facilitates embodied and collective resilience, not as a 'bouncing back', but as an evolving, emergent process of a "forward spiral."

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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, communication, and trauma-literate programming, with through a lens of trauma-informed journalism and resilience. 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 is a frequent guest expert on Positively America and 77 WABC with Ernie Anastos.

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For the last decade, Lu has designed and led workshops and retreat experiences for women around themes of mind-body resilience, personal self-growth, mindful leadership, 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, neurorelational education, grounded in attachment science, interpersonal neurobiology, developmental and affect psychology, and the science of relational resilience.

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