Dr Lucy Hone is a Director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience, a research associate at AUT University, a published academic researcher, best-selling author and blogger for Psychology Today.  On Queen’s Birthday weekend in 2014, the sudden death of her 12-year-old daughter, Abi, in a tragic road accident, forced Lucy to turn her substantial academic training and professional practice to foster resilience in very personal circumstances.

The blog she wrote in the aftermath of Abi’s death attracted international attention and resulted in the best-selling non-fiction title, Resilient Grieving, now available in NZ, Australia, the US and the UK. Having been trained by the thought-leaders in the field – Marty Seligman, Chris Peterson, Barb Fredrickson, Karen Reivich and Angela Duckworth among others – at the University of Pennsylvania, she went on to attain her PhD in wellbeing science/public health at AUT University in Auckland.  She now assists organisations – from leading law firms to primary schools – to design and implement wellbeing/resilience strategies creating sustained and meaningful change. The widespread respect for Lucy’s work is demonstrated by two large-scale pilot projects she is currently running involving dozens of Christchurch schools, backed by Ministry of Education funding. Lucy is also a member of the NZAPP Executive Committee, the All Right? advisory board, the conference convenor for Positive Education NZ, and New Zealand’s only representative of the International Positive Education Network (IPEN)