Anne Brafford

Anne Brafford, JD, MAPP, PhD in Progress. After practicing law for 18 years, Anne left her job as an equity partner in employment litigation at a large U.S. law firm to study with world-class experts in individual and workplace thriving. Her aim is to help the legal profession build engaging workplaces where people and businesses can grow and succeed together.

Anne is the founder of Aspire (www.aspire.legal), an educational and consulting firm for the legal profession. She is the Chairperson of the ABA Law Practice Division’s Attorney Well-Being Committee and is a member of multiple other national and local-level attorney well-being initiatives. She served as the Editor-in-Chief and co-author of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being’s 2017 Report, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practice Recommendations for Positive Change. She also authored the Well-Being Toolkit for Lawyers and Legal Employers, sponsored by the ABA’s Working Group to Advance Well-Being in the Legal Profession.

Anne has earned a Master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania and, since 2014, she has been working toward a PhD in Positive Organizational Psychology at Claremont Graduate University. She has served as a teaching assistant to both co-founders of positive psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman and Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. She researches, writes, and speaks about lawyer thriving, including topics like positive leadership, resilience, work engagement and burnout, meaningful work, high-quality motivation, work-life balance, political skill, and retention and advancement of women lawyers.