Yes — in the literal sense. My doctorate (PhD) is in Psychology, and my research focused explicitly on happiness.

I’ve studied what people mean when they say “happiness,” and what supports it in lived experience. The work has been published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and it forms the basis of my upcoming book Happy and You Know It.

Studying Happiness

My initial degree was a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, where I studied under one of the pioneers of happiness research, Professor Richard Kammann. Professor Kammann established one of the founding principles of happiness research, that external conditions had little effect on our happiness. He claied that there must be an underlying factor, a single source of happiness. Sadly he died far too early, just as psychology was starting to take happiness seriously.

MBA?

I did what many psychology graduates did: went into industry, beginning with IBM, and then a number of international tech companies, . This led to a career as a Management Consultant and Project Director, working on projects and assignments across the world. I picked up an MBA on the way. I know the pressures of the workplace, the focus on results and the conditions most people work under. I call this my applied psychology phase. I kept on wondering if there was an underlying cause of happiness, underneath the chaos and pressure.

Back to School

I was fortunate at the end of that career to be able to return to academia, and to blend my work and life experience back to my first love, the study of psychology. I studied psychotherapy, and then took the opportunity to do what I always wanted to do: formally study happiness at a doctorate level, and see if I could fins out more about the source of happiness is. I remember when I started my analysis after the results came in, and one consistent factor stood out. I remember the shock, the headiness, and the double and triple checking. I was definitely on to something.

You can tell from the photograph that I have lived a little. I feel this helps provide a practical perspective on the field of happiness. I have gone through most phases of life. My approach is always aimed at how people of all walks of life can reclaim what they always had inside their their happiness.

The Science of Happiness and the Mystery of You
This book brings together two fundamental perspectives. First, there is a science of happiness. We can study what people mean by happiness, what predicts it, and what tends to undermine it. My research—published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology—points to a clear pattern: happiness is less something we achieve, and more something that returns when we reconnect to ourselves.

Second, there is the mystery of you. Happiness isn’t a generic outcome. It arises in a real human life—shaped by temperament, relationships, grief, longing, and your inner world no one else can fully see. This book doesn’t try to replace that mystery with advice, it offers a mirror: real-life narratives and situations of people finding their way back to happiness.