Susan L. Smalley, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Psychiatry and Founder of the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). During her thirty-year career as a behavior geneticist, she received numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants and published extensively on autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and mindfulness. She spent the last decade involved in human rights work supporting women and girls and investing in companies that focus on wellness. She works to bridge research with action through her involvement at MARC as well as the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute that she helped create dedicated to kindness research and its translation to solve societal problems. She is a mother of three and lives in Los Angeles with her husband.