Since 2012, the University of Minnesota's Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing has hosted wellbeing thought-leaders to inspire and educate the community, organizations, and life-long learners through the Wellbeing Lecture Series.
Past speakers like Brené Brown, Atul Gawande, Dessa, Celeste Headlee, Rhonda Magee, and Jon Kabat-Zinn have explored a range of topics including purpose, vulnerability, food and wellbeing, gratitude, technology, and mindfulness, among others.
Discover more about your own wellbeing with us through the Wellbeing Series, an opportunity to engage, learn, and experience what wellbeing means to you.
To make disability-related accommodations, please contact the Bakken Center's community relations office ([email protected], 612-625-8164).
2024 Wellbeing Series Speakers
WELL at WORK: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace featuring Esther Sternberg, M.D.

Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us featuring Susan Magsamen

Susan Magsamen is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, a pioneering neuroaesthetics initiative from the Pedersen Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Susan’s work focuses on how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the brain, body and behavior and how this knowledge can be translated to inform health, wellbeing and learning programs in medicine, public health and education. She is also the author of the Impact Thinking, an interdisciplinary translational research model to enhance human potential through the use of arts and aesthetics. In addition to her role at IAM Lab, she is the co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint project in partnership with the Aspen Institute. The Blueprint aims to create the field of Neuroarts where arts and aesthetics are mainstream in medicine and public health. Magsamen is also the co-author of the New York Times Bestseller, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us written for the general public.