Gina M. Biegel, LMFT, is a psychotherapist, researcher, speaker, and author in the San Francisco Bay Area who specializes in mindfulness-based work with adolescents. She is founder of Stressed Teens, which has been offering mindfulness-based stress reduction for teens (MBSR-T) to adolescents, families, schools, professionals, and the community since 2004. She created MBSR-T to help teens in a large HMO’s outpatient department of child and adolescent psychiatry whose physical and psychological symptoms were not responding satisfactorily to a multitude of other evidence-based practices.

She is an expert and pioneer of bringing mindfulness-based approaches to youth. She is the author of the Take in the Good: Skills for Staying Positive and Living Your Best Life, The Stress Reduction Card Deck for Teens: 52 Essential Mindfulness Skills,The Self-harm Workbook for Teens: Mindfulness Skills to Help Teens Overcome Cutting and Self-harming Behaviors, Thoughts, and Feelings;Be Mindful & Stress Less: 50 Ways to Deal with Your (Crazy) Life;Mindfulness for Student Athletes: A Workbook to Help Teens Reduce Stress and Enhance Performance;The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens: Mindfulness Skills to Help You Deal with Stress (first and second edition); and Be Mindful: A Card Deck for Teens. She also has a mindfulness practice audio CD, Mindfulness for Teens: Mindfulness Practices to Reduce Stress and Promote Well-Being to complement the MBSR-T program. She provides worldwide multiday trainings and intensive ten-week online trainings and works with teens and families individually and in groups. Her work has been featured on the Today Show, CNN, Psychology Today, Reuters, the New York Times, andTricycle to name a few. Click here to learn more about the books she has written. Click here to see the published evidence-based journal articles she has written and co-written.

Stacie Cooper, M.A., Psy.D., Editor/Writer, Life Coach, Mindfulness & Pilates Instructor. Since I've built my life around my passion for being balanced, multifaceted, and making it hard to answer the question at parties, "What do you do for work?" in one word, I truly love helping others to develop balance, create unique, ideal, inspiring, and ever-changing and expanding lives in which they are constantly growing and gaining new experiences that allow them to feel connected, to flourish, and to thrive.

            I have both master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology (from Pepperdine University) and have worked as a counselor with youth and young adults to help them explore, grow, earn, create, overcome, hope, and dream since 2003 (e.g., Duke University’s student counseling center, Long Beach Job Corps, and an inpatient adolescent psychiatric ward in Los Angeles). My doctoral dissertation was on the role of hope in therapy, and my enthusiasm for strengths-based approaches and prevention as well as working with adolescent girls led me to pursue a career in life coaching. As a Stressed Teens-certified instructor of mindfulness-based stress reduction for teens (MBSR-T, empirically supported approach originally developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn at UMass Medical Center), I have led MBSR-T workshops in middle school, high school, and community center settings in Orange County. I have also presented to parents and teens on topics related to mindfulness, stress management, self-esteem, and identity.

            I am an associate of the International Positive Psychology Association. I have also been involved in Girls Incorporated of Orange County since 2015 as a volunteer, career panelist/motivational speaker, keynote speaker for the Eureka summer camp for girls, and student mentor. I also teach Pilates, have been an academic and scientific editor/proofreader since 2009 (with Scribendi, an international editing company), and published a fiction novel (The Masks We Wear). See my website for more information: www.awareandthriving.com.