Flourish51
Flourish51 is a creative studio and living lab that brings the science of human flourishing to life in how people live, work, and learn.
DESIGN WITH SOUL
Flourish51 turns science into living practice—so we can:
remember who we are, rewire how we live and work, and help our communities flourish from the roots up.
We are a creative studio with 4 living laboratories designing new ways to translate the science of human flourishing into systems that measurably improve how people learn, work, and live.
We partner with clients to design sustainable, flourishing-centered lives, ventures & solutions—always built around strengths as our most valuable resource.
Our work is informed by global learning expeditions exploring flourishing, creativity and strengths in action.
Flourish51
OUR VISION
A galvanized global 51 by 51 movement toward one of the most ambitious public health goals of our time:
51% of the world flourishing by 2051.
OUR MISSION
To discover, design and deliver novel ways of putting the science of human flourishing into everyday practice, holistically, across all dimensions of well-being.
“flourishing is living in a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good, including the contexts in which that person lives.” .
-Human Flourishing Program at Harvard
INTRODUCING FLOURISHING-CENTERED DESIGN
At Flourish51, we’ve evolved human-centered design into Flourishing-Centered Design (FCD)—the living operating system behind everything we build. It brings together four disciplines into one integrated practice for designing lives, environments, and systems with greater care and intention.
4
Principles
3
Disciplines
1
Living System
4 PrincipLes
These principles move FCD beyond a design method. They define a worldview: that human life, environments, and systems can be shaped more intentionally when we understand design, nature, difference, and flourishing as deeply connected.
Human systems are designed. Systems can also be redesigned with greater wisdom and care.
Flourishing is natural. Life tends toward growth when the conditions around it do not continuously obstruct it.
Nature is a teacher. Living systems offer patterns for rhythm, adaptation, reciprocity, and renewal.
Human variation is normal. Difference is the design reality that should shape everything
01
Flourishing Science
The evidence base for wellbeing, vitality, purpose, and meaningful growth.
02
Human-Centered & Universal Design
Practices of design centered on lived human experience & human variation as the norm.
03
Biomimicry
Nature’s intelligence for rhythm, resilience, adaptation, and renewal.
“Human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”
-Sir Ken Robinson
4 living labs.
One life.
Each Flourish51 lab is a continuously designing & putting into practice the science of well-being to support life design (GEM Lab), venture deisgn (THRIVE Lab) and holistic youth development (FYA). Our GEM Journeys are global learning expeditions to experience flourishing in action around the world.
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The GEM Lab
Where individual flourishing gets designed from the inside out — at every season of a human life. Premium intensives for emerging adults, families, mid-life redesigners, and the people holding eldership. Ages 11 through 95+
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The THRIVE LAB
A space for ventures of all sizes—from start ups to re-designs of businesses, nonprofits, projects, products or services—to ignite human potential by intentionally designing flourishing into the systems. Advisory intensives, Flourishing Audits, and the rare deep partnership.
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GEM Journeys
Curated learning expeditions into the world's living cultures of flourishing. Bespoke and structured as ethnographic research to gain insights into what it means to flourish. GEM Journeys bring small groups to real places for durable impact.
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Flourishing Youth Academy
FYA is how Flourish51’s labs extend into youth. FYA teaches flourishing-centered life & venture design to young people (ages 11–26) at the stages where identity and direction are being shaped.
we now have the evidence and the tools to free our lives from survival mode and grow into true flourishing.
-Sharyn Tenn
How We Work
A practice made of practitioners.
A collective shaped to do the work.
Flourish51 is built as a collective. The work is delivered by a network of seasoned experts and young advisors who activate around each engagement based on signature strengths, lived experience, and depth of craft. The shape of the team meets the shape of the work.
The Operating Principle
The collective is the practice. Each engagement activates the practitioners whose strengths and experience map to the work — public health alongside design, education alongside community development, seasoned wisdom alongside the lived voice of the young people the work serves.
The collective shows up where the work lives.
Each Flourish51 lab draws from the collective in a different shape. The same practitioner may activate in two or three labs depending on the engagement. The pattern below shows the kinds of expertise each lab calls forward.
The GEM Lab
The GEM Lab activates practitioners with depth in positive psychology, coaching, narrative work, and seasonal practice. The collective brings character-strengths fluency and the ability to walk individuals through the I&I Design Rhythm.
The THRIVE Lab
The THRIVE Lab activates practitioners with backgrounds in public health, organizational design, leadership development, and human-centered research. The collective brings the rigor to redesign cultures, programs, and systems toward measurable flourishing.
GEM Journeys
GEM Journeys activates practitioners with expertise in experience design, biomimicry, place-based learning, and cultural fluency. The collective brings the ability to design immersive landscapes where flourishing becomes embodied.
Flourishing Youth Academy
FYA activates practitioners with depth in youth development, education, community programming, and mentorship — paired with young advisors who shape the work in real time. The collective brings intergenerational design to every offering.
We’re Built differently —
because flourishing
requires it.
we now have the evidence and the tools to free our lives from survival mode and grow into true flourishing.
-Sharyn Tenn
—The 2051 Moonshot—
51% of humanity
flourishing
by 2051.
Let’s Treat flourishing
like we treat infectious diseases.
A galvanized global movement to make flourishing the new public health frontier
Public health succeeds when it redesigns the environment — clean water, safer food, better housing, vaccination campaigns.
We need the same upstream intelligence applied to human flourishing.
The 2051 moonshot requires a coalition of aligned communities that cuts across sectors in a shared direction where every classroom, workplace, clinic, app, street, and household can become a tiny piece of the 2051 solution.
“We can all sink or we all float, 'Cause we're all in the same big boat”
-Song by The Police ‧ 1981
THE THrive lab
A Strengths-Based venture Design Lab
n the THRIVE Lab, leadership teams re-engineer their culture so high-performance and human flourishing are mutually reinforcing. Organizations emerge with a new strengths-centered orientation that fuels the creativity needed to design transformative solutions.THRIVE Lab delivers this work through a modular, season-based architecture. Workshops (four half-day immersions) and Sprints (one half-day intensives) create focused entry points, while extended engagements unfold across seasons — each building on the last to embed flourishing into the fabric of how the organization operates.
Spring — Activation
Surface strengths, clarify direction, and design the conditions for thriving to take root. Fresh energy, shared language, and aligned intent.
Summer — Performance
Translate design into action. Strengths in motion, teams in sync, and systems calibrated for momentum and visible impact.
Autumn — Alignment
Refine structures, recalibrate roles, and release friction. Focus sharpens, priorities clarify, and coherence deepens across the organization.
Winter — Integration
Consolidate gains, embed practices, and design for sustainability. Reflection becomes infrastructure; thriving becomes durable.
Each phase stands alone, yet together they form a high-performance ecosystem where people and results strengthen each other by design.
FLOURISHING VENTURE DESIGN PROGRAMS
flourish51’s Global Flourishing Learning Expeditions
Curated Journeys to places known for their flourishing cultures
Character Virtue Expeditions
Seasonal journeys organized around the six virtue clusters — courage, humanity, wisdom, justice, temperance, transcendence — in places where each is lived with particular depth.
Innovation Expeditions
Small-group journeys designed as shared inquiry and documented to contribute to the Flourish51 evidence base. Curated expeditions of 5–10 days, intimate groups, founder-designed for depth, access, and coherence.
Private Family & Team Journeys
Custom-designed expeditions for families, leadership teams, and organizations with specific developmental aims — fully tailored, with premium design and facilitation.
GEM JOURNEYS
GEM JOURNEYS
FLOURISH51’S YOUTH LAB
The Flourishing Youth Academy —FYA
how the labs extend into youth.
FYA is the framework under which three of our four labs extend into the 11–26 age range — making Flourish51 a true intergenerational living laboratory. The youth extensions are small, premium, and scholarship-funded.
Youth Extension of GEM Lab
Ages 11–26
GEM Lab for Youth
Life design and strengths discovery for young people — small-cohort developmental sprints aligned to the seasons of adolescent and emerging-adult life. Testing how FCD methodology adapts across ages when the design brief is self-discovery at the most formative stage.
Youth Extension of THRIVE Lab
Ages 11–18
THRIVE Lab for Youth
Venture design, collective action, and early leadership formation for young people building real projects during the most generative years of life. Testing how organizational and venture flourishing methodology translates to youth-scale collaboration and impact.
Youth Extension of GEM Journeys
Ages 18–26
Flourishing Futures Fellowship
An integrated fellowship combining life design, venture work, and an immersive GEM Journey for Youth — the capstone experience of the FYA living laboratory. Tracks for high school graduates, gap-year students, college students, and those not pursuing college.
The GEM Lab is where individual flourishing is designed from the inside out — we call it flourishing life design.
Modular Workshops & Coaching:
Modular Workshops & Coaching:
Built around four phases: Illuminate, Ideate, Innovate, and Integrate. Each module can stand alone or combine into a cohesive journey.
Illuminate clarifies what’s really going on—surfacing hidden assumptions, misaligned incentives, and unmet human needs. It builds awareness as the foundation for change.
Ideate expands possibility—generating bold, human-centered ideas that prioritize meaning, connection, and well-being alongside performance.
Innovate turns ideas into action—prototyping, testing, and refining solutions that work in the real world, not just on paper.
Integrate embeds what works—aligning systems, habits, and culture so that new ways of working actually stick and scale.
The Full Journey: Four Seasons of Flourishing
The complete experience unfolds as a cyclical, season-based journey—each phase building on the last:
Winter: A time for reflection and truth-telling. Participants slow down, examine current realities, and uncover root causes beneath surface challenges.
Spring: A period of renewal and possibility. New ideas emerge, creativity expands, and alternative futures take shape.
Summer: A season of action and growth. Ideas are tested, refined, and brought to life through experimentation and iteration.
Autumn: A time for grounding and harvesting. What works is embedded into systems and culture, creating lasting change and preparing for the next cycle.