Her curiosity about understanding the human mind took her from neuroscience laboratories to Himalayan monasteries and, finally, to classrooms. Today, Emiliana Rodríguez-Morales works to bring social-emotional education to more people, especially those with fewer opportunities to access it.
As a child, Emiliana Rodríguez-Morales wanted to understand how the mind and emotions worked. Her father was a psychologist, and their conversations raised more questions than they managed to answer. That curiosity led her to study Physics, convinced that a scientific education would allow her to explore human behavior from different disciplines.
Her search soon went beyond the laboratories. After a stay at Richard Davidson’s affective neuroscience laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, she traveled to India to deepen her knowledge of contemplative practices and mind training. She planned to stay for a few months. She stayed for two years.
There she also discovered her educational vocation. She took part in a project to train teachers in Buddhist monasteries in science teaching and critical thinking. The experience introduced her to educational models that placed as much importance on emotional development as on academic learning.
Back in Mexico, she helped create an organization dedicated to developing social-emotional education programs based on scientific evidence. Her career led her to take part, in 2017, in the design of Mexico’s national social-emotional education curriculum, especially in the area of self-awareness and attention training. She also completed a master’s degree in Mind, Brain and Education at Harvard University.
In recent years she has explored the potential of technology to expand the reach of this learning. First, through virtual reality experiences at Made for Joy and, more recently, through Bloom, an initiative that develops technological solutions to bring social-emotional education to families, teachers and communities with fewer resources.
She currently also collaborates with Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program. Her work continues to respond to that childhood curiosity, although it now has a practical dimension: how to help people get to know themselves better, relate in healthy ways and develop a fulfilling life.
