Greg Hicks and Rick Foster
Greg Hicks and Rick Foster have dedicated the last seventeen years of their lives to studying people and organizations that thrive. Embarking on a unique journey to research happiness in 1995, they eventually traveled to all 50 states, 7 continents, and over 40 countries, finding and interviewing hundreds of extremely happy people. Their initial research uncovered a system of nine choices that’s been studied by researchers at leading institutions and proves to lead to good health, strong team culture, better job performance, and effective stress-management.
Their first book, How We Choose to Be Happy – The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People (Putnam, 1999), became a national bestseller and has been on bestseller lists ever since. Available in 22 languages, it was selected by the Book of the Month Club as one the Best Books of the Year, and was nominated as Best Motivational Book by the prestigious Books for a Better Life.
In 2003 Hicks wrote LeaderShock –And How to Triumph over It (McGraw-Hill). Based on the FosterHicks system, it was selected as the #2 best business book by Amazon that year.
For the remainder of the decade, in addition to their keynotes and training sessions, Greg and Rick interviewed and worked with thousands of patients, doctors and nurses. In their latest book, Happiness & Health (Penguin, 2009), they presented the FosterHicks system as a way to enhance brain function, pump up immune systems, and help people make better health choices, and have been teaching their Brilliant Health program to patients with cancer, heart disease and other chronic illnesses. In 2011, results of a study of patient-participants who attended the Brilliant Health program at the Mayo Clinic were presented to the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Conference. It showed the program to be an effective intervention in fostering positive health-related changes, a sense of control over health, and feelings of hope related to health for people with cardiac disease.
Most recently, Rick and Greg co-created, with Dr. Catherine O’Brien, an online course called Sustainable Happiness, about how to create happiness for ourselves and our communities, and, at the same time, well-being for the planet. Another recent addition, their children’s book, The Martha is Mine…An Almost True Story, is about the power of community.
Through their energetic and transformational presentations, Greg and Rick have inspired people all over the world (see Clients section) and have been on the faculties of the American Hospital Association’s Fellowship Programs, the UC Berkeley Dept. of Public Health (where they recently taught Leadership, Sustainability, Happiness and Health for graduate students), and are frequent lecturers at Stanford University.
Foster and Hicks have appeared on numerous national T.V. and radio shows and have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and magazines such as Health, Fitness, Self, Good Housekeeping, Fit, Working Mother, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and Readers’ Digest.