Design a Healthy Culture: A DIY Guide for Building a Healthy Culture

Denise Gaskin has worked in the healthcare and behavioral health, not-for-profit, and legal industries. After completing a B.S. in Exercise Physiology and Wellness from Ball State University, she joined a large hospital system and began to design and implement wellness programs for employees and the hospital's corporate clients. She earned an M.S. in Counseling Psychology, intending to understand how humans process and adapt to change and what causes them to act in ways not always in their best self-interest. This led to a position with a regional behavioral health organization in North Carolina, where she spent more than 10 years working in two different capacities--as director of a program serving children with behavioral and emotional disorders, and in a lead operations role for a non-profit organization. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in 2008, after which she left the field of behavioral health to take a position of COO at a law firm in Asheville.In late 2012, she moved to Portland, Oregon and assumed the position of COO at Schwabe Williamson and Wyatt, a large regional law firm serving the Pacific Northwest. In January 2020, she left Schwabe to pursue writing, teaching, training, and consulting with firms and businesses. Through her writing, she hopes to share her passion for the connection between culture + health + business strategy and design thinking.