Kennon Sheldon is a Curator’s Professor of Psychology at the University of Missouri. He has long been active in Positive Psychology, having attended the foundational Akumal conferences and having won a Templeton Prize in 2002 for his early contributions to the field. He studies goals, motivation, and well-being, and is best known for his work in Self-determination theory, his self-concordance model of optimal goal striving, and his happiness research with Sonja Lyubomirsky. He is the author of the books Optimal Human Being: An Integrated Multilevel Perspective (Erlbaum, 2003), Self-determination theory in the clinic: Motivating Physical and Mental Health (Yale University Press, 200 and Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self teaches us about how to Live (Basic Books, 2022), among others. He has also published more than 300 research articles, with a Google Scholar H of more than 100.

Dr Martin E. P. Seligman is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology and Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where he focuses on positive psychology, learned helplessness, prospection, optimism and positive education. He is a best-selling author of several books, including Flourish. His most recent book is The Hope Circuit, his autobiography, He received the American Psychological Society’s William James Fellow Award for basic science, the Cattell Award for the application of science, and three Lifetime Distinguished Scientist awards from the American Psychological Association. In 1996, Seligman was elected President of the American Psychological Association by the largest vote in modern history. His mission is the attempt to transform social science to work on the best things in life – strengths, positive emotion, good relationships, meaning, and human flourishing.