As one of Inner Explorer’s Co-Founders, Laura discovered the benefits of mindful awareness more than 25 years ago when she was trying to manage the stress of travel and long workdays. While working at GE, Laura had the insight to share her mindfulness practice with hundreds of fellow employees. Upon seeing the many positive results the daily practice had on performance, creativity, and wellbeing, she realized it would be the perfect fit for education. The practices can help children navigate the ups and downs of life with resilience, alleviating stress and anxiety, and can help them focus, allowing them to be ‘ready to learn’. — all with compassion, openness, and a sense of happiness. She can hardly wait for the first generation of kids going through this program to reach adulthood! Laura received a Bachelor of Science Degree from Boston College and a Doctoral Degree in Psychology from Sofia University. She was trained as a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor through the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts. She has researched the effects of mindfulness on education outcomes, finding that the practices reduce behavior issues including detentions and suspensions by 60%, improve grade performance by 7-15% and even reduce teacher stress by 43%. When not working, Laura loves to spend time outdoors with family and friends, especially with her husband Rick and son Will. She recently ran the Boston Marathon to bring Inner Explorer mindfulness programming into 450 more classrooms, now reaching 22,000 classrooms and 550,000 students worldwide. Read more about Laura’s professional history or email her atlbakosh@innerexplorer.org.
Laura Bakosh
