LU HANESSIAN

Lu Hanessian is a biopsychosocial educator, practitioner, adjunct professor, senior consultant, strategic advisor, multidisciplinary program designer, and facilitator across sectors with companies, organizations, non-profits, educational institutions, and communities. Her work draws from a unique integration of relational neuropsychology, interpersonal neurobiology, trauma and stress sciences, somatics, embodied expressive arts, conflict transformation, social and narrative justice, the dynamics of resilience, and transformative growth.

 

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

 

In her doctoral research, Lu is exploring the dynamics of adversity, resilience, embodied safety, the power of story, and interoceptive agency as a relational process and a living, emergent process of cultivating interdependence with each other, community, and nature. 

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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 relational resilience.

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Her upcoming books Return to Tender, on the generative, reparative power of tenderness and parent-child connection, and Practice Makes Present will be published in 2025. She has written two illustrated books The Garden: A Parenting Parable and 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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