Kimberly Schonert-Reichl

Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, Ph.D., is an award-winning teacher, researcher and professor at the University of British Columbia. For more than 20 years, Kim’s research has focused on the social and emotional learning (SEL) and development of children and adolescents. She is current Interim Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership at UBC.

Her work places particular emphasis on identifying the processes and mechanisms that foster children’s positive human qualities such as empathy, altruism, resilience, compassion and kindness.  Kim is an expert in the science and practical ways in which schools, families and communities can promote such positive traits in young people.

Kim is currently investigating the effectiveness of classroom-based universal SEL programs and conducting interdisciplinary research, in collaboration with neuroscientists and psychobiologists, examining the relation of executive functions and biological processes to children’s social and emotional development.

For the past several years, Kim has worked in collaboration with educators across British Columbia in the area of SEL. In 2004, she received the Vancouver School Board Recognition Award in acknowledgment of her support for district initiatives regarding social responsibility and SEL.

Before arriving at UBC, Kim served as a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Postdoctoral Fellow in the Clinical Research Training Program in Adolescence at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University Medical School, Dept. of Psychiatry.  Dr. Schonert-Reichl began her professional career as a middle school teacher and then as a secondary school teacher at an alternate school for “at risk” adolescents.

She is a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute and the Botin Foundation’s Platform for Innovation in Education, and is the author of numerous publications in scholarly journals, books, and reports on children’s social, emotional, and moral development.

Kim also serves on several national and international advisory boards, including the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) Research Advisory Group, and the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education.