Moises Naim
Global Political Analyst; Bestselling Author of The End of Power & The Revenge of Power; Former Editor-in-Chief, Foreign Policy; Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Maria Sirois
Positive Psychologist & Resilience Expert | Author, The Generous Exchange, A Short Course in Happiness After Loss & Every Day Counts | International Consultant & Former Dana-Farber Clinician
Resilience is not about being unbreakable, it's about learning to integrate difficulty while continuing to engage fully with life. Maria Sirois has spent 3 decades teaching this truth to leaders, organizations, and individuals facing adversity. As a positive psychologist, author, and former pediatric oncology clinician, she offers audiences the rare combination of scientific rigor and deep human wisdom, showing how we can hold suffering and possibility without diminishing either.
Want to book Maria Sirois as a speaker for your event? Please provide the info below and we’ll get in touch within 24h:
Maria Sirois biography
Maria Sirois, Psy.D., is a positive psychologist, resilience expert, and international consultant who has spent more than three decades offering practical wisdom to help individuals and organizations thrive through adversity. From boardrooms to bedsides, she brings together rigorous research, compelling storytelling, and actionable strategies to cultivate resilience, clarity, and grounded optimism when facing chronic stress, significant transitions, or profound loss.
Happiness speaker Maria Sirois began her clinical work in pediatric oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, one of the world’s leading cancer treatment and research centers, where she trained in the Pediatric Oncology unit working with gravely ill children and their families. This early experience—witnessing how families facing unimaginable circumstances could deepen in love, courage, and meaning—shaped her lifelong exploration of what enables people to grow through suffering rather than simply survive it. She discovered that children confronting terminal illness often displayed greater resilience, wisdom, and capacity for joy than their parents, lessons that became the foundation for her first book and her subsequent career teaching post-traumatic growth and evidence-based flourishing.
Books and Teaching Philosophy
Sirois is the author of three widely acclaimed books that integrate positive psychology with the realities of living through difficulty. The Generous Exchange: How Attention to Beauty, Goodness and Excellence Restores Us and Our World explores how deliberately noticing beauty, moral goodness, and human excellence can restore personal wellbeing while strengthening our engagement as active stewards of the planet and each other. A Short Course in Happiness After Loss (And Other Dark, Difficult Times) offers a curriculum for those wrestling with pain, grief, shock, or chronic disappointment, providing frameworks for reclaiming hope and building resilience during life’s harshest moments. Every Day Counts: Lessons in Love, Faith, and Resilience From Children Facing Illness shares the profound wisdom she gained from her internship at Dana-Farber, revealing how children facing mortality teach us that there is no time but now to live with an open heart.
Her teaching has reached audiences internationally through her work as faculty at the Wholebeing Institute, where she directed courses in positive psychology training, and at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, where she developed programs on flourishing through challenge. She has served as consultant to organizations including the Hospital Outreach Team at The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, guiding teams on stress reduction, healthy grieving, and professional wellbeing. Sirois delivered a TEDx talk on living authentically that demonstrates her signature ability to weave vulnerability, humor, and insight into transformative presentations.
As a speaker, Maria Sirois offers audiences something rare: permission to hold both suffering and possibility at once, without diminishing either. Her keynotes challenge the false choice between toxic positivity and chronic pessimism, teaching instead the “moves” resilient people make—facing reality honestly, choosing what sustains them, borrowing strength from trusted others, and integrating grief rather than waiting for it to end. Leaders and teams leave her sessions equipped with practical tools for navigating uncertainty, concrete strategies for building cultures of psychological safety and sustainable performance, and renewed capacity to lead with both clarity and compassion during periods of volatility and change.
Maria Sirois Speaking Videos
Could beauty save the world? | Maria Sirois | TEDxBerkshires
Living an authentic life: Dr. Maria Sirois at TEDxBerkshires
Maria Sirois Keynote Topics
Resilience is not an innate trait reserved for the fortunate few—it is a set of learnable moves that enable individuals and teams to maintain clarity, purpose, and effectiveness during periods of significant stress. Maria Sirois presents the core framework resilient people use: facing reality honestly without catastrophizing, choosing daily practices that restore rather than deplete, borrowing strength from trusted relationships, and understanding grief as integration rather than completion. Drawing from positive psychology research and her decades of clinical work, she demonstrates why toxic positivity fails, why pretending difficulty doesn't exist backfires, and how to build genuine capacity for post-traumatic growth. Participants leave with concrete strategies for navigating uncertainty, tools for recognizing and interrupting burnout patterns, and renewed understanding that we can be both imperfect and magnificent, exhausted and generative, heartbroken and hopeful—all at once.
In times of widespread anxiety, cynicism, and exhaustion, deliberately noticing beauty, moral goodness, and human excellence offers a scientifically validated path to restoration and renewed engagement. Maria Sirois introduces the concept of the generous exchange: as we become more present to what is beautiful, good, and excellent in the world, we not only calm our nervous systems and enhance our own wellbeing, but we naturally become better stewards of our communities and planet. This presentation explores the neuroscience of why beauty matters for stress reduction, how recognizing goodness in others activates prosocial behavior, and why appreciating excellence inspires us to elevate our own contributions. Unlike passive consumption or forced gratitude practices, this approach offers a sustainable cycle of mutual restoration between individuals and their environment. Ideal for teams experiencing fatigue or disconnection from mission.
The path through profound loss or disappointment is not about "getting over it" or "moving on," but about learning to integrate difficulty while rebuilding capacity for meaning, connection, and even joy. Maria Sirois challenges the cultural narratives that treat grief as something to complete or fix, presenting instead a framework for what she calls "grounded optimism"—the ability to acknowledge harsh reality while maintaining agency and hope. Drawing from her clinical work with families facing terminal illness and her research in positive psychology, she teaches audiences how to differentiate between healthy grieving and depression, why resilience requires facing pain rather than bypassing it, and how post-traumatic growth happens not despite suffering but sometimes because of it. Participants discover practical tools for supporting others through difficult transitions, language for discussing loss in professional contexts, and permission to be fully human—flawed, exhausted, heartbroken, and still capable of leading well.
The most effective leaders understand that sustainable performance requires cultivating wellbeing, not sacrificing it. Maria Sirois presents a leadership framework grounded in positive psychology and decades of consulting with organizations under pressure. She explores why cultures that demand relentless positivity breed cynicism and burnout, how to build psychological safety without lowering standards, and the specific practices that enable teams to maintain effectiveness during prolonged stress or significant change. Drawing from her work with healthcare systems, nonprofits, and businesses navigating volatility, Sirois demonstrates how leaders can model the integration of challenge and capacity—acknowledging difficulty honestly while choosing actions that restore rather than deplete. Participants learn to recognize early warning signs of organizational burnout, design systems that reward sustainable effort over performative overwork, and lead in ways that honor both results and humanity.
Speaker topics
FAQs on Booking Maria Sirois
Why Maria Sirois?
Booking Maria Sirois for your event means bringing a speaker who has mastered the art and science of thriving through adversity. As a licensed clinical psychologist, positive psychology expert, and author of three influential books, Sirois offers unparalleled expertise in resilience, post-traumatic growth, and sustainable wellbeing during periods of stress and transition. Her career spans work in pediatric oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, international consulting with business leaders, and faculty positions training professionals in evidence-based positive psychology. Audiences consistently describe her as a "master storyteller" and "an orator of great power and beauty" who combines rigorous research with deeply human narratives that move people to tears, laughter, and meaningful action. Sirois is ideal for organizations navigating change, teams facing burnout, leadership conferences addressing workforce wellbeing, or any audience seeking practical frameworks for maintaining performance and purpose during challenging times. Contact Aurum Speakers Bureau to bring Maria Sirois to your next conference or corporate event.
What is The Generous Exchange?
The Generous Exchange is both Maria Sirois's latest book and a transformative concept for personal and collective restoration. The book explores how deliberately paying attention to beauty, moral goodness, and human excellence activates a positive cycle that benefits both the observer and the world. Drawing on positive psychology research, Sirois demonstrates that noticing beauty—whether in nature, art, or everyday moments—calms our nervous systems, reduces stress, and enhances resilience. Recognizing goodness in others strengthens prosocial behavior and makes us better citizens. Appreciating excellence inspires us to elevate our own contributions. Unlike passive consumption, this active appreciation creates what Sirois calls a "generous exchange": as we become more present to beauty and goodness, we naturally engage more fully as stewards of the planet and each other. The book provides practical guidance for cultivating this habit, particularly valuable for individuals experiencing fatigue, cynicism, or disconnection from purpose.
What did Maria Sirois learn from children with cancer?
During her psychology internship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Pediatric Oncology unit, Maria Sirois worked with children facing life-threatening illnesses and discovered profound lessons about resilience, presence, and living authentically. She observed that children often approached suffering with greater faith, clarity, and capacity for joy than adults—not through denial, but through remarkable presence in the current moment. These children taught her that there is no time but now to live with an open heart, that love matters more than fear, and that wisdom often emerges from the most difficult circumstances. One child told her about conversations with God that brought such confidence she gave away the invisible shield she'd received, certain she wouldn't need it. These experiences, documented in her book Every Day Counts, fundamentally shaped Sirois's understanding that post-traumatic growth is real, that humans can deepen in meaning and connection even while facing loss, and that resilience is not about being unbreakable but about learning to integrate grief while continuing to engage fully with life.
What topics does resilience speaker Maria Sirois cover?
Maria Sirois keynotes focus on resilience, positive psychology, post-traumatic growth, navigating loss and transition, building sustainable wellbeing during chronic stress, and cultivating grounded optimism in uncertain times. Her presentations teach the specific "moves" that resilient individuals and organizations make: facing reality without denial, choosing practices and perspectives that sustain energy and clarity, borrowing strength from trusted relationships, and understanding grief as integration rather than something to complete. She addresses the power of appreciating beauty, goodness, and excellence as active restoration practices, the science of flourishing through adversity, and how to build cultures where psychological safety and high performance coexist. Sirois's content is ideal for leadership summits addressing workforce wellbeing, healthcare conferences focused on provider resilience, organizational change initiatives, wellness programs, and any audience seeking evidence-based strategies for maintaining meaning and effectiveness during difficulty. Contact Aurum Speakers Bureau to book Maria Sirois for your event.
How to book Maria Sirois as a keynote speaker?
Aurum Speakers Bureau can help you book Maria Sirois as a speaker for your next event, conference, or board meeting. Simply fill out our contact form to inquire about Maria Sirois's availability for a speaking engagement. One of our booking agents will respond to your request immediately and contact the speaker to let them know you want to hire them. We will assist you with obtaining speaking fees, booking information, and confirming availability for Maria Sirois or any other top keynote speaker or celebrity of your choice.
How much is Maria Sirois speaking fee?
Maria Sirois speaking fees are determined by several factors, including the event's date, whether it's a virtual or in-person event, the duration, format, preparation required for their speech, and more. The same applies to the cost to hire any other top expert speakers and celebrities. The Speaker Fee Range listed on our website is simply a guideline and is subject to change without notice. If you would like to hire Maria Sirois to deliver a keynote speech for your event, please fill out the contact form or email us at info@aurumbureau.com with as much detail as possible. One of our experienced agents will get in touch with you and let you know exactly how much it will cost to book Maria Sirois.
How can I contact Maria Sirois?
We only work with Maria Sirois on paid speaking engagements. Aurum Speakers Bureau can assist you in booking Maria Sirois and will handle all negotiations, contracts, and logistics associated with having Maria Sirois speak at your event. We will be your sole point of contact throughout the process. Get in touch with Aurum Speakers Bureau today, and we will reach out to any motivational speaker or celebrity you want to enquire about speaking at your event. If you wish to contact Maria Sirois for any other reason, we will be unable to assist you as we are not authorized to provide personal contact information.
Can I book Maria Sirois for a virtual keynote?
Yes, Maria Sirois is available for virtual keynotes and webinars. To book Maria Sirois for a virtual event, please complete the contact form or send us an email to inquire about the special fees for virtual engagements.
