Get to Know New FIRE Staffers: Pamela Paresky, Chief Research Officer to the President and CEO

FIRE welcomes Pamela Paresky as our new Chief Research Officer to the President and CEO.

Pamela is a psychologist, researcher, leadership consultant, and author, and her work focuses primarily on leadership, happiness, kindness, and leading a meaningful life.

She earned her Ph.D. in Human Development and Psychology from the University of Chicago, and has a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Columbia University. She also holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology, and is a regular contributor to Psychology Today.

“I’m thrilled to be at FIRE,” Pamela said. “And I’m especially excited to be working with [FIRE President and CEO] Greg Lukianoff, whose work I have long admired.”

“The reaction to my Psychology Today article, How Making Colleges ‘Safe Spaces’ Makes Us All Less Safe, which responded to Greg and Jon Haidt’s earlier article in The Atlantic,” she added, “made me realize not only how urgent it is to bring public awareness to the ways in which First Amendment rights are dealt with on college campuses, but also how critical it is to find ways to teach college students the power of civil dialogue and how to interact with ideas with which they fundamentally disagree, without feeling psychologically damaged, and without writing off those who hold the ‘wrong’ ideas as unworthy of debate.”

Pamela was formerly an adjunct/research professor at the United States Air Force Academy where she co-taught a leadership course, worked with the Center for Character and Leadership Development, and was a featured speaker at the National Character and Leadership Symposium. She has been an executive leadership coach and consultant for businesses, nonprofits, and educational institutions, and performed research on happiness, relationships, and “Flow”—a construct describing optimal human experience— at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center.

In addition to her new position here at FIRE, Pamela is the director of the Aspen Center for Human Development, a nonresidential center for advanced study that facilitates collaboration between a faculty of scholars in diverse fields.

Pamela lives in Colorado with her two children.

Please join us in warmly welcoming Pamela to FIRE.