Rachel Colla | Lecturer - Centre for Wellbeing Science
Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne

Rachel Colla is a wellbeing, motivation and performance specialist, whose work has spanned multiple sectors including corporate, health, education, and not-for-profit. Rachel is an experienced facilitator and coach with expertise in wellbeing, goal setting and achievement, and leadership development. Prior to her work in organisational settings, Rachel worked as a psychologist in the education sector, promoting flourishing for individuals managing psychological distress and mental illness. Her work in schools is now focussed on consulting at an organisational level to create the conditions for the whole community to thrive. She is also the designer of the innovative Hope Labs approach, a curriculum that fuses systems science, wellbeing, and neuroscience of learning. Rachel is the inaugural University of Melbourne Education Innovation Fellow representing the Faculty of Education. She coordinates and teaches a broad range of undergraduate breadth subjects and postgraduate qualifications, including the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology and Masters of Education. She is a dual-recipient of the Faculty of Education Teaching Excellence awards recognising her outstanding achievement in teaching, skill and imagination in the design and evaluation of teaching programs. Her current research draws on the intersection of wellbeing and systems science with storytelling to create a dynamic systems approach to the study of hope.