INTRODUCING...

Jean Houston, Ph.D.

Dr. Jean Houston is a scholar and researcher in human capacities, and for over 30 years, has co-directed, with her husband Dr. Robert Masters, the Foundation for Mind Research. Their work has focused on the understanding of latent human abilities.

Her specialty is the development and application of multiple methods of increasing physical and mental skills, learning and creativity. She has presented the results of her work and studies in some 17 books. Dr. Houston's new book, Jump Time, will be published in the Spring of 2000 by Tarcher/Putnam. She has personally shared her research findings through speeches, conferences and seminars at educational institutions and business organizations in over 40 countries, and is often invited to work with leaders of such groups, as well as heads of governmental and non-governmental agencies, to assist them in rethinking their goals and agendas.

As Advisor to UNICEF in human and cultural development, she has worked to implement some of their extensive educational and health programs, primarily in Myanmar (Burma) and Bangladesh. In 1998, Dr. Houston worked with leaders throughout New Zealand to help bring forth that Nation's promise. With other international agencies, she has implemented the social development of indigenous people through the integration of their unique cultural gifts into their health and educational structures. In September of 1999, she traveled to Dharamsala, India, as one of a distinguished group chosen to work with the Dalai Lama.

She has worked with numerous corporations, including Xerox, Beatrice Foods, General Electric and Rodale Press. She has also worked with governmental agencies, including the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment and the Department of Energy.

A past president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology (1977), she has taught philosophy, psychology, and religion at Hunter College, the New School for Social Research and Marymount College, as well as summer sessions in human development at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of British Columbia. She was Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Oklahoma in that university's Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program in 1982.

In addition, Dr. Houston presented the William James Lecture at Harvard Divinity School, the Off Lectures at Wilson, and the Alfred Stiemotte Lecture in Philosophy at Quinnipiac College. Since 1959, she has spoken at hundreds of colleges and universities, including the Universities of Montreal, Arizona, South Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Alabama, Minnesota, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. She has directed two three-year courses in human capacities development and a program of cross-cultural mythic and spiritual studies, now entering its seventeenth year.

She has chaired, among many other academic and scientific convocations, the 1975 United Nations Temple of Understanding Conference of World Religious Leaders. Under the sponsorship of the Department of Commerce, she has also helped initiate and then chaired the 1979 Symposium for leading government policy makers.Her work has been the core of a great many teaching-learning communities throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. In 1984, she created a national not-for-profit organization, The Possible Society, to encourage the creation of new ways for people to work together to help solve societal problems.

In 1985, Dr. Houston was awarded the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Association of Teacher Educators. In 1993, she received the Gardner Murphy Humanitarian Award and the INTA Humanitarian of the Year award. In 1994, she received the Lifetime Outstanding Creative Achievement Award from the Creative Education Foundation. In 1996, she was given the Keeper of the Lore award for her studies in myth and culture. In 1997 she was made a Fellow of the World Business Academy.

Among her books are Public Like a Frog, The Hero and The Goddess, The Possible Human, The Search for the Beloved, Godseed, Life Force, Listening to the Body, Manual for the Peacemaker, The Passion of Isis and Osiris. Her autobiography, A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story, was published in 1996 by HarperSanFrancisco.Her PBS special, A Passion for the Possible, has been widely shown. Her book drawn from that program was published by Harper SanFrancisco in August, 1997.

Dr. Houston's ability to inspire and invigorate people enables her to readily convey her vision-the finest possible achievement of individual potential. That same ability lets her share with her audiences and students throughout the world, the excitement of that possibility.

She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and a Ph.D. from Union Graduate School. She has also been the recipient of honorary doctorates.

Honorarium Range: $5,000 to $10,000