When Elizabeth Dunn got her first job, she wondered what to do with the money that was suddenly appearing in her bank account. So she teamed up with her friend Mike Norton (at Harvard) to figure out how people could use money to buy the most happiness. She and Norton wrote a book called Happy Money, which presents five research-based principles designed to help individuals and organizations use their money in happier ways. It was selected by the Washington Post as one of the "top 20 books every leader should read."

Recently, her work has focused on how people navigate trade-offs between time and money, and how mobile technology can both support and undermine human happiness. Dunn is an avid skier and surfer, and she survived a shark attack.