About Liz

Veteran. Scholar. Author. Contemplative. Guide.

I help leaders, teams, and individuals navigate crisis, uncertainty, and turbulent change by developing the inner resources that drive better decisions, healthier conflict, and ethical action under pressure.

I use battlefield-tested tactics to help people build embodied resilience and the capacity to adapt. This approach sparks deep transformations—in themselves, their lives, their relationships, and their communities.

My work integrates neuroscience, trauma-informed practices, and organizational leadership to address the root cause most strategies ignore: dysregulation at the individual and collective level.

I’ve taught these tools worldwide to corporate executives, senior government leaders, military service-members and veterans, diplomats, humanitarian aid workers, intelligence agents, law enforcement and other first-responders, and healthcare workers.

There’s nothing I teach that I didn’t first learn in my own mind and body, test through empirical research, and refine through working with many thousands of people in extreme conditions around the world.

My Approach Draws On

• Lived experience with chronic stress and trauma, often in extreme environments—from childhood adversity, to sexual trauma, a near-death experience while deployed in Bosnia, and temporary loss of my eyesight
• Rigorous academic training: PhD from Harvard, MBA from MIT, BA from Yale—and more than 25 years as a tenured professor at Georgetown University
• Peer-reviewed neuroscience and biobehavioral research on stress, trauma, and resilience, published in top-tier scientific journals
• Clinical trauma training and proficiency as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), a body-based trauma therapy
• More than 25 years of deep contemplative practice, including ordination as a Buddhist nun in Myanmar

I’ve spent 35 years synthesizing insights across disciplines that rarely speak to each other—international security, technology strategy, conflict resolution, organizational behavior, neuroscience, and somatic psychology—and integrating them through my own embodied practice.

What This Looks Like in Practice

I integrate understandings from many different fields to identify the leverage points for changing human social systems to create better outcomes. I’m the award-winning author of two books that exemplify this approach:

• Paths to Peace explores the obstacles to ending war and identifies the leverage points for overcoming these obstacles. It won the 2009 Furniss Award, for an “exceptional contribution to our understanding of international security.”
• The international-bestselling Widen the Window explores the neurobiology of stress, trauma, and resilience and identifies the leverage points for transforming our neurobiological conditioning to create a more balanced, connected, and satisfying life.

I’m also the creator of Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)^®—an evidence-based approach to building embodied resilience. I collaborated with neuroscientists and stress researchers to test MMFT’s efficacy with U.S. combat troops preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as with Ukrainian military and civilians in the ongoing war.

MMFT research has been published in top-tier peer-reviewed scientific journals and featured on 60 Minutes, ABC Evening News, National Public Radio, and in Time magazine, Forbes, The Washington Post, and many other media outlets.

You can find all my research on Google Scholar, Research Gate, and the Georgetown University website.

Ready to take the next step? I work with leaders and organizations through keynote speaking, immersive workshops, and extended consulting engagements designed for sustainable transformation.