Constance Scharff, PhD, is an international researcher, field explorer, and humanitarian committed to redefining how the world understands—and supports—human resilience in the face of trauma. She is the founder and director of The Human Resilience Project, a bold, multi-year effort to investigate how people across diverse environments and cultures confront adversity, especially challenges stemming from climate disruption.

A member of The Explorers Club, Dr. Scharff has spent more than two decades conducting immersive research in over 40 nations, living alongside and learning from some of the world’s most isolated and marginalized communities. Her work bridges psychology, public health, and cultural anthropology, asking: “What do people around the world do when everything falls apart? How do they face adversity with courage and hope?”

Dr. Scharff’s current research is a three-year, 10-nation Explorers Club Flag and Rolex Watch Expedition that begins in June 2025 in northern Kenya with the Gabra people of the Chalbi Desert. Her all-woman research team will work alongside local elders, traditional healers, and scientists—including Dr. Paul Robinson’s research team, which has conducted a 41-year longitudinal study on Gabra drought survival strategies—to explore the practical and psychological foundations of resilience. The project will continue through Greenland, Bhutan, New Zealand, the Amazon, and beyond.

Dr. Scharff’s ultimate goal is to improve global mental health outcomes by identifying shared threads of resilience across cultures—and advocating for the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge and healing systems in mainstream care. Her work challenges Western paradigms of trauma and recovery, urging practitioners and policymakers to listen deeply to communities with lived experience of survival.

She is the recipient of St. Lawrence University’s Sol Feinstone Humanitarian Award, which honored her for her commitment to improving global mental health.

A bestselling and award-winning author, Dr. Scharff’s latest project, “A Year of Living Bravely,” is a seven-country study of everyday courage and emotional endurance. The book will be published in late 2027.

Whether in the Arctic or the desert, in traditional longhouses or modern clinics, Dr. Scharff’s work illuminates the common strength we all share—the power to adapt, connect, and heal.