Speaker, & Writer
Kari
Leibowitz
Hi! I'm so glad you're here.
I'm Kari. I'm a health psychologist, speaker, and writer.
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My research, writing, speaking, and teaching aims to help us understand and harness the power of our mindsets to improve our health and wellbeing.
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To do this, I've trained healthcare teams to use mindsets to improve their patient care and helped people all over the world use their mindsets to embrace winter. I've designed and taught the original Stanford course, "Mindsets Matter: Strategies for Improving your Health, Performance, and Wellbeing." I've studied how changing our mindsets about side effects can improve our experience with medical treatment, and I've studied compassion meditation with Tibetan monks and nuns. I've lived in New Jersey, Atlanta, San Francisco, in Norway above the Arctic Circle, at the foothills of the Himalayas in Dharamsala, India, and in Jerusalem.
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I received my PhD in Social Psychology at Stanford University, where I worked in the Stanford Mind & Body Lab, and served as a U.S.-Norway Fulbright Scholar at the University of Tromsø. I've been the program coordinator for the Emory-Tibet Partnership, now the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, where I helped lead the Tibetan Mind/Body Sciences summer study abroad program in India and organized the 2013 visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Emory University. My BA is in Psychology from Emory as well.
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My mission
The way we look at the world matters. But all too often, we don't stop to think about how we think. We fail to question our mindsets, or to recognize that we can change our mindsets and, in doing so, change our experience. My work aims to help connect people with their mindsets and with tools we can all use to cultivate mindsets that make us feel happier, healthier, and more like our best selves. My mission is to make science-backed strategies for mindset change accessible, so that we can use them deliberately, consistently, and effectively to improve our lives, our families, our communities, and the world.
About me
I grew up at the Jersey Shore, and some of the places I've lived and loved include Atlanta, Northern Norway, San Francisco, and Amsterdam. I love to read (every year I read my age in books - follow me on Goodreads!), exploring new places, and lighting dozens of candles every night when the sun sets. I will go far, far out of my way for a good joke. Some of my favorites include: ordering custom blue ribbons that say "Blue Ribbon Baby: Congratulations, you are an amazing baby!" which my husband and I hand out to exceptionally cute babies we see in the world, printing a giant "You can't handle the tooth!" banner for my brother's dental school graduation, and surprising my dad with an ice sculpture of his own name at my wedding.
