On Culture: Lessons from Harvard’s SHINE Summit & Ten Years of Worker Well-Being

Dear Culturati Insider,

As promised, I want to share reflections from last week’s Harvard SHINE Summit, which marked a decade of inquiry into how we measure, support, and scale worker well-being. The Cambridge convening, co-founded by Dr. Eileen McNeely and Dr. Greg Norris, brought together technologists, sociologists, executives, public health and community leaders, and what emerged were deeply interconnected insights about purpose, place, and people—and how each sets the conditions for human flourishing.

The Summit began by reframing sustainability, away from scarcity and sacrifice and toward abundance and human benefit. Purpose, research shows, must be built into governance and daily behaviors and reinforced through accountability and incentives that move people from agreement to action. Place determines how people show up and connect, from designing spaces that support collaboration and belonging to creating environments that strengthen well-being. And people remain the true return, the most powerful lever for performance. Productivity, psychological safety, and retention increase when organizations treat care as infrastructure, aligning healthy spaces with policies that normalize well-being and equity. As Meghan Chapple, Vice President of Sustainability at the Rockefeller Foundation, observed, “If you imagine the future vividly, you’re drawn to create it.” 

The broader context gave these conversations their urgency. Rachel Meyer, Associate Teaching Professor at Northeastern, traced how risk has steadily shifted from employers to employees through layoffs, healthcare, training, and retirement insecurity, fueling stress and eroding institutional trust. In discussing supply chains, speakers pointed out that “safety” cannot be reduced to fire codes and compliance; it must also mean dignity, wages, and voice. And throughout the Summit, it was emphasized that AI will either accelerate these divides or be governed to strengthen human outcomes, a challenge made more critical by data showing that young people are struggling across nearly every measure of well-being. At Culturati, we are committed to helping advance this work, operationalizing purpose, reimagining place, and investing in people to build cultures of trust. 

To the road ahead and toward flourishing,

Myste Wylde, COO

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