Lea Waters

Lea Waters (born 24 February 1971) is an Australian psychologist, global speaker, best-selling author and award-winning researcher In addition, she has affiliate positions at University of Michigan and sits on the Science Board of The University of California and Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Her main areas of research are positive psychology, trauma recovery, adversarial growth, resilience, school psychology and parenting.

She was the 2017-2019 President of the International Positive Psychology Association and the Chair of the 6th World Congress in Positive Psychology. Waters was awarded Member of the Order of Australia in 2020. She has been a psychologist for 25 years and is registered with AHRPA, is a member of the Australian Psychological Society and a member of the College of Organizational Psychologists. In 2005, Waters developed her own consultancy business called 'Visible Wellbeing' working with schools and corporations. She is also a gifted speaker and has been on speaking tours across the globe including speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai in 2018. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, the Toronto Globe and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Waters' acclaimed parenting book The Strength Switch was listed in Top Reads by Berkeley University’s Greater Good Science Centre and Top 5 Books UK. It has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Hungarian, Arabic, Spanish, French and Russian.

Waters, working with Martin Seligman and St Peter's College, Adelaide, has been instrumental in the development and implementation of positive education programs throughout Australia. Waters is committed to translating research and working with the media. She has written for the Wall Street Journal, TIME.com Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. Waters has also appeared on the TEDx Talk. She is the Director of the teacher training program Visible Wellbeing and has developed student e-wellbeing resources for teachers to deliver to students via online and virtual classrooms.

Selected publications

Selected awards 2020: Member of the Order of Australia. 2015: Top 100 Women of Influence in Australia, Westpac Bank and Financial Review. 2007: Prime Minister’s Award for Best Australian University Teaching Excellence Award.

Personal life Waters was married to Matthew Scholes (1996-2024). The couple had two children, Nicholas and Emily.