Bio
I have been on a journey to re-learn how to be a human being, having spent too many years as a human doing. Originally trained as a zoologist, I moved into economics in order to "make a difference" in the world, and enjoyed a 30-year career in that field, culminating in the job of chief of staff at the International Monetary Fund. Exhilarated and exhausted, I stepped away when I realized life is short and my children's time at home even shorter, and I was missing out on both.
Mindfulness meditation and positive psychology have been my routes into better understanding what it means to be a human being. I came to MAPP concerned about how tech can undermine intentionality and identity, and wrote my capstone on the impact of tech on autonomy. This was an unsatisfactory effort because the conceptual framework to do this work properly didn't exist. Accordingly, since MAPP I have been working to develop a theoretical framework to analyze autonomy and its companion concept, authenticity, as a Visiting Scholar in the Psychology Department at Georgetown University. It turned out that this framework hinged on modern philosophical theories of well-being (notably, desire theories), and I am currently working on a paper to incorporate these into psychology.
In another part of my life, I am active in the national Hydrocephalus Association (HA), because I have a child with this condition. I am a vice-chair of the Board, chair of the Finance and Research Committees, and leader of various special projects. I am working on interventions to promote resilience in parents of kids with hydrocephalus, with a pediatric neurosurgeon at the University of Alabama and with a MAPP service learning team in 2022-23. I also teach mindfulness in the hydrocephalus community, having been trained as a teacher by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield.
Originally from the Netherlands, I was educated in the French and UK systems, and have lived in Washington DC for a long time, with my kids becoming pretty thoroughly American.
All of which makes me a very confused person.
