Jim Henson’s Wowsabout: Bringing Awe to Life

Halle Stanford is a Primetime and Children's Emmy Award winner, a 2025 Silver Circle Children's and Family Emmys inductee, and a twelve-time Emmy-nominated television producer whose work has helped shape the global landscape of children's and family entertainment. Over a distinguished career spanning decades, she has created, developed, written, and showrun groundbreaking primetime and family series in both live-action and animation. During her 30-year tenure at The Jim Henson Company, which included serving as President of Television for 8 years, she guided some of the industry's most beloved franchises, including Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Sid the Science Kid, Dinosaur Train, Slumberkins, Harriet the Spy, Pajanimals, and Bear in the Big Blue House. Now the founder of 7 Crow Stories, Halle continues to champion imaginative, inclusive, and educational storytelling that inspires young audiences worldwide.

Dorien Davies is an executive producer, writer, and principal puppeteer. She studied sketch and improv at The Groundlings Theater and was recruited into the cast of Brian Henson's live stage show Puppet Up! — Uncensored, where she learned the Henson-style of television puppetry. Since then, Dorien has puppeteered dozens of cherished characters for film and TV, including the beloved Lulu on Word Party and Fizz on the Julie Andrews series Julie's Greenroom, both for Netflix. She is an Executive Producer, Co-Creator, and Writer of Wowsabout, and performs the starring role of the musical hedgehog Roxy.

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center, and host of its award-winning podcast, the Science of Happiness. His research focuses on the biological and cultural evolution of compassion, awe, love, beauty, and humility. He is the author of hundreds of scientific articles and several best-selling books, including Born to Be Good, The Power Paradox, and AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. He has consulted for Apple, Pinterest, Google, the Sierra Club, Carnegie Hall, and the National Parks, and served as a scientific consultant for Pixar's Inside Out, Soul, and Inside Out 2.

Vicki Zakrzewski, Ph.D., is the founding education director at the Greater Good Science Center, where she translates the science of compassion, empathy, gratitude, awe, forgiveness, and other social, emotional, and ethical skills to improve the well-being of students and educators. She writes articles, gives talks and workshops all over the world, designs online courses for educators, and is the creative lead for the GGSC’s new online resource for educators, Greater Good in Education. Vicki also serves as the co-associate editor of SEL practice for Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, sits on several advisory boards, and consults and collaborates with educational organizations. Sample collaborations include Harvard’s EASEL Lab and Making Caring Common; the CalHOPE project, providing SEL training to every California educator; CASEL’s California Collaborating States Initiative; the Learning and Policy Institute at Stanford University; Generation Citizen; UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Peace and Sustainable Development; the Delhi Ministry of Education’s Happiness Curriculum; Science for Monks and Nuns in Dharamsala, India; the Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai, U.A.E.; the Mind and Life Institute (of which she is a fellow); the Jim Henson Company; and Pixar/Disney on The Emotions Survival Guide.

Maryam Abdullah, Ph.D., is the Parenting Program Director of the Greater Good Science Center. She is a developmental psychologist with expertise in parent-child relationships and children’s development of prosocial behaviors. At GGSC, Maryam’s role is to support organizations providing parenting education to raise caring children and to share the latest parenting science findings on Greater Good. Prior to joining GGSC, she was an Assistant Project Scientist at the University of California, Irvine Child Development School in the Department of Pediatrics, a school-based behavioral health program where she provided parenting and child interventions, oversaw its clinical outcomes and program evaluation, and mentored undergraduate students with research projects.

Sarah Bracken is the Education Outreach and School Partnerships Manager at Greater Good Science Center. Prior to joining GGSC, Sarah taught in secondary classrooms from Alaska to Virginia and collaborated with educators to co-create communities of practice and other professional learning opportunities focused on belonging and equitable education for students of refugee and immigrant backgrounds. As part of GGSC’s Education team, Sarah is grateful to continue to partner with educators around the world to build kinder, happier schools that center well-being and joyful teaching and learning experiences for adults and children alike.