News & Insights

Announcing updates to our emotional and social wellbeing platform, Purposeful, and the date for or upcoming PurposeCast “Taming Your Inner Voice: Transforming the Critic Into Your Strongest Guide.” The event is open to the public and designed especially to support Mental Health Month with evidence-based ways people can harness their inner voice for good.

Dr. Strecher will present a model and supporting evidence for a purpose- and social determinants-driven approach to emotional self-regulation, resilience, and mental health. Vic will be joined by Kate Sommerfeld, President for Social Determinants of Health, from ProMedica, who will describe how their organization is supporting both their community and their employees in coping with the pandemic.

Vic Strecher and Bea Boccalandro, founder and president of VeraWorks, a global consulting firm helping people find opportunities to do societal good through their everyday jobs, will walk us through job purposing and its benefits including higher job satisfaction, better performance, reduction in stress, and improved wellbeing. Through their stories and examples, you will learn why Bea encourages everyone to mess with their jobs for the greater good and how you can start doing the same today

Despite our digitally connected world, we find ourselves living in the most lonely era in history. More than 60% of US adults report being either always or mostly lonely. And those numbers are pre-COVID-19. Each of us has the power to change this. We can learn to foster belonging and build deep communities at work and at home to help us feel more connected and defeat loneliness. In this PurposeCast, learn time-tested principles on how to create a culture of belonging.

“Our whole world is becoming increasingly less purposeful, and as a result more depressed, more anxious,” says Vic Strecher, University of Michigan professor and CEO of Kumanu. “And we’re starting to lose direction in our lives.” Strecher has dedicated his research to helping people find meaning in work and purpose in life. His current project aids this mission. In this presentation, he describes Kumanu’s collaboration with the Harris Poll and the analytics methods used to answer to complicated questions.

If you were to walk into any of the Zingerman’s businesses, you might just find CEO and co-founder Ari Weinzweig pouring water for his guests. In addition to building 10 successful businesses, Ari has published 6 books, is a sought-after Keynote speaker and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Bon Appetit magazine. Ari has sculpted a unique orientation to life and embraces service to others both in life and at work. Join Vic Strecher and Ari Weinzweig CEO and co-founder of the award-winning Zingerman’s Community of Businesses for an engaging discussion exploring what it means to be “In Service of Others”.

The pressures on corporate leaders are unlike any we’ve seen in recent memory. A global pandemic, new work-from-home realities, childcare and eldercare pressures, and social and racial justice movements are accelerating a re-think of what it takes to create an emotionally well, engaged, high performance workforce. Join leaders from Kumanu and Willis Towers Watson who will share a leadership prescription for organizational performance and workforce wellbeing in challenging times.

Vic Strecher, PhD, MPH, Kumanu Founder and CEO, to be recognized for a career of research leading to breakthroughs in scalable, evidence-based health behavior change at this year’s HERO Annual Forum.