Kristen Donnelly has been on the TEDx stage four times as a speaker in the past year. She is an international empathy educator and a researcher with two decades of experience in helping people understand inclusivity benefits. In addition, she is an “unapologetic nerd for stories of change.” Kristen lives in Philadelphia, where she is surrounded by her pile of books and 

Why Being a Human is Hard

“Being a human is hard not because you’re bad at it, but because it is hard.” If we can listen to ourselves and understand ourselves and others better, we can make our human experience both fuller and richer. 

Empathy is About Understanding

“Empathy is a cognitive, mental framework where you decide at every moment that you can, to choose understanding instead of stereotypes.” Understanding can become a practice and a posture that you use to move through the world instead of ignoring what’s around you or becoming ignorant.

How to Make Your Life Better

“I’ve searched high and low for an instruction manual [on life] and have not found one,” says Kristen. But what she has found out about life is that life is better when we do it together. Since we are biologically wired to do life together, it only makes sense that community matters and makes our lives better.

Listen in discover why what matters about trauma is how it affects you as a person, how to respond when encountering others’ trauma, and how she put herself back together after a life-altering event happened within her small community.

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