Ariel Phillips consults with and speaks to a variety of groups and organizations, including college and graduate students, higher education faculties, and health and business organizations. She focuses on two interconnected areas: human development and global sustainability.
Ariel helped found and then directed the Success-Failure Project at Harvard University's Bureau of Study Counsel.[1] The Project created opportunities for conversation and reflection about the meaning of success, failure, mistakes, and resilience. In addition to her continuing work on these issues, she also offers workshops and consultation on listening and responding, effective teamwork, and leadership skills.
At MIT, Ariel co-developed and co-taught D-Lab: Earth, a project-based course that focused on the relationship between low-income populations and environmental sustainability. She continues to speak about the relationship between biodiversity, sustainability, poverty, and human psychology to many groups, including at MIT, Caltech, Humboldt State, and UC Davis, and Antioch University. She is a licensed psychologist in Massachusetts, USA.
Ariel holds a master's degree in Education from the University of California and a doctorate in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University. Equally important to these achievements, she is a high-school dropout and proud graduate of a community college in California.
[1] For over two decades, Ariel worked as a counselor/psychologist at a remarkable office, Harvard's Bureau of Study Counsel. The Bureau's work was based on a whole-person approach. It embodied the idea that finely tuned listening and genuine, co-participative relationships are an integral part of the interrelated areas of personal, intellectual, and academic development. The Bureau’s workshops aimed to address students’ current and emergent concerns, and the staff undertook many collaborative projects with students, faculty, and administrators, as well as numerous Bureau-based projects, including, in Ariel's case, the Success-Failure Project. The Bureau was permanently closed in December 2019.
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