Elizabeth Dunn

Scientist

Dr. Elizabeth Dunn is a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, where she conducts original research on happiness. Liz's new book, “Leave the Lights On: How Joyful Decisions Can Save Our Species,” co-authored with Dr. Jiaying Zhao, will be published in June 2026 by Penguin Random House. Leave the Lights On is a bold invitation to reimagine climate action not as a burden, but as an opportunity to build a brighter future—without guilt, without gloom, and without giving up the things that make life worth living. Liz also directs The Happy Lab at UBC. The mission of her lab is to figure out how to optimize the use of scare resources—including time, money, and carbon—to promote human well-being. She described her research on money, happiness, and generosity at TED2019, and her talk was selected as one of the top TED talks of the year by the curation team. Her work has been published in top academic journals (e.g., Science) and featured in hundreds of media outlets, including The New York Times, the BBC, and NPR. Her first book, "Happy Money," was selected by the Washington Post as one of the “top 20 books every leader should read.”

Fighting climate change with joy

Happiness is the missing weapon in the fight against climate change.

Attracting large marine animals