The Center for Healthy Minds will deepen its research on well-being across the lifespan, thanks to a gift from the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund. Over the next three years, the foundation will donate a total of $300,000 to the Center to advance its research and mission of cultivating well-being and relieving suffering through a scientific understanding of the mind.

As the President of the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund, Lisa Stone Pritzker has teamed up with the Center to advocate for a kinder, healthier world. With the gift, Stone Pritzker joins other philanthropic partners supporting the Center’s Investors’ Circle, an initiative to raise $1 million annually to support the core organizational and research needs of the Center.

“I love the hybrid work of the Center – first-class neuroscience research and also translational research make practical differences in well-being for all people,” Stone Pritzker says. “I hope this synergy will be field-changing, and help mindfulness, compassion, and well-being be an important part of our health, education and employment systems.”

The collaboration reflects Lisa Stone Pritzker’s lifelong role as proponent for children’s health and well-being – a growing focus of the Center’s research efforts, whether it’s exploring how the infant brain develops or how stressors experienced in childhood affect emotional well-being in adolescence into adulthood.

“Research shows the importance of brain development in the very young. If these practices improve positive brain function, then the earlier the better to inculcate practices that will provide preventative care,” she says. “It’s also exciting to be involved with such positive action backed by scientific evidence.”

Such generosity will enable the Center to expand its expertise and exploration of the mind by supporting scientific staff, state-of-the-art research equipment, data collection and analysis to bring research results to the scientific community and general public. With such support, researchers will be able to ask new and exciting questions related to the well-being of children and adults.

“Lisa and John Pritzker are forward-thinking in their desire to create lasting change in the world,” says Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds. “As partners, they bring a long-term perspective to nurturing children and adolescents, and understand that childhood experiences not only shape our well-being in youth, but have lasting repercussions that take years to fully grasp scientifically. Their support is critical in getting us closer to understanding how we can promote positive outcomes across the lifespan.”

Stone Pritzker, an alumna of the University of Wisconsin–Madison who studied Dance Therapy, has remained connected to the university’s research and is a part of a growing number of donors providing critical support to research organizations like the Center in an increasingly uncertain federal funding environment.

– Brita Larson