About Ryan Niemiec

Ryan M. Niemiec, Psy.D. is a leading international figure in the education, research, and practice of character strengths that are found in all human beings. He’s education director of the renown VIA Institute on Character, a nonprofit organization in Cincinnati that leads the global advancement of the science of character strengths. Ryan is an award-winning psychologist, certified coach, annual instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, special guest faculty at 5 coaching and positive psychology institutes, and author of 11 books, 90+ academic papers, and several-hundred user-friendly articles.

His books include the bestselling consumer book, The Power of Character Strengths (Links to an external site.), the popular stress workbook The Strengths-Based Workbook for Stress Relief (Links to an external site.), the 2020 workbook The Positivity Workbook for Teens (Links to an external site.), and Positive Psychology at the Movies (Links to an external site.). He’s also author of the two leading practitioner-focused books in positive psychology – Character Strengths Interventions (Links to an external site.) and Mindfulness and Character Strengths (Links to an external site.). The latter book contains the evidenced-based program he founded, Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP), used by practitioners across the globe.

Ryan has been interviewed by a number of luminaries including the legendary Larry King in 2020. He’s given nearly 1,000 presentations on positive psychology topics, including a character strengths world tour in 2009-2010, a TEDx talk in 2017, a speaking tour of Australia, a keynote at a Harvard conference, and invited presentations at conferences across the globe. He is Fellow of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) and serves on their Council of Advisors. He is currently co-founder and president of the Spirituality/Meaning Division of IPPA.

Ryan lives in Cincinnati with his wife and three young, zestful children. His highest strengths are hope, love, honesty, fairness, spirituality, curiosity, and appreciation of beauty. He’s an avid chess player, zealot of Michigan State University, super-fan of The Walking Dead, and a collector of vintage/rare Pez dispensers.

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