Positive Professionals

Anne Brafford, JD, MAPP, PhD Candidate. After practicing law for 18 years, Anne left her job as an equity partner in employment litigation at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP 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, an educational and consulting firm for the legal profession, and author of the ABA-published book titled Positive Professionals: Creating High-Performing, Profitable Firms Through The Science of Engagement. The Professional Development Consortium (PDC) has selected Anne as a Trusted Advisor--an exclusive team of advisors for law firms’ professional development staff. Anne also is the Chair 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: Practical 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 Proession.   Anne has earned a Master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania and has completed all but her dissertation for the PhD program in Positive Organizational Psychology at Claremont Graduate University. She has served as a teaching assistant for 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. Anne can be reached at abrafford@aspire.legal.