Where Purpose Begins
This work began at a family kitchen table. A young woman named Maya was the one everybody came to. Growing up, she listened, and people brought her their lives. In college, she turned that listening into a method, connecting learning to students' own lives and stories. Her school district took the method up, from elementary through high school, and students learned through the stories they lived.
That lived story is where the Applied Purpose research begins. It is the story this lab exists to understand and to serve.
Opening That New Pathway: Perceptions with Impact
Watch on YouTubeA Life Being Lived, Long Before It Had a Name
The Kitchen Table
It started at her family's kitchen table, a place where people came to talk and to be heard.
Everybody Came to Her
Growing up, Maya was the one everybody came to. She listened, and people brought her their lives.
Listening Became a Method
In college, she turned listening into a method, connecting learning to students' own lives and stories. A researcher told her: "You were doing this work before you had any training at all."
The District Took It Up
Her school district took the method up, from elementary through high school, and students learned through the stories they lived.
The Words Came Later
In her words: "The words came later." The purpose was already there.
The Career Recognition Gap
The research name for what this story shows is the Career Recognition Gap: the gap between the work a person is already doing and the name the world has for it. The naming moment is when the work finally gets its name.
Maya was doing the work long before anyone named it. Understanding that gap, and how it closes, is the research question this story raises, and the question the work on this page grows from.
"We connect people to purpose, one conversation at a time."
The Perceptions with Impact series
Anonymized Program Participation Dataset — An Invitation to Researchers
2,115+ participants · 42 countries · 9 instruments · Available for graduate & doctoral research
Studying Purpose
as It Is Lived
We study how purpose develops over time—and design safe, real-world pathways that help people stay connected to meaning, contribution, and belonging.
The Five Principles of Voice Up
This is how Voice Up has achieved what it has to date.
Collaboration
Collaboration: all are welcome.
Humility
Humility: we all have much to learn.
Precision
Precision: all the details matter.
Patience
Patience: we all need forgiveness; we all make mistakes and learn from each.
Empathy
Empathy: we must understand your why.
Purpose in Action
Applied programs bringing purpose science to communities, health workers, and organizational leaders.
The B Curriculum & Medicaid
A structured curriculum connecting behavioral health, purpose science, and Medicaid-supported pathways—designed to build lasting skills and self-direction.
Voice Up for Community Health Workers
Empowering community health workers with purpose-centered tools, language, and frameworks to better serve their communities and sustain their own sense of meaning.
Non-Profit Leadership & Founder Development
Supporting non-profit leaders and founders in aligning their organizations with purpose—building sustainable missions, resilient cultures, and authentic community impact.
What We Do
Longitudinal Research
We study purpose over time, not at a single moment—tracking how identity, belonging, and contribution shift through real experience.
Internships as Infrastructure
We turn existing internships into safe starting points for purpose development—across schools, colleges, and workplaces.
Youth Voice & Community
We create pathways for young people to contribute through writing and dialogue—learning that purpose is relational, not just personal.
These three pillars work together—allowing us to study purpose responsibly while helping people begin their own purpose journeys.
We connect people to purpose through research, science, and action—studying how purpose develops and creating safe pathways for meaningful contribution.
Purpose is not a trait to measure or a moment to capture. It's a capacity shaped through real participation.
A Shared Infrastructure for Purpose, Practice, and Belonging
Helping humanity stay connected to purpose through everyday, simple actions—especially during times of change, uncertainty, and transition.
Applied Purpose Science Research Lab
Studying How Purpose Is Protected
Focuses on understanding and protecting purpose at the systems level—studying how purpose is supported or disrupted across life stages.
This lab defines the "why" and the ethical "how"
Learn MoreMake the Difference Network
Making Practice Visible and Accessible
Opens the door to research practice early, gently, and together—making reading, writing, revision, and questioning visible and humane.
This lab creates the lived entry point
Learn MoreTogether, They Create a Full Purpose Ecosystem
Applied Purpose Science provides the ethical framework, research base, and system design principles
Make the Difference provides the daily practices, participation spaces, and lived experience
One lab ensures purpose is protected.
The other ensures purpose is practiced.
Neither works alone.
Purpose as Infrastructure, Not Pressure
Together, these labs reject the idea that purpose must be declared, measured, optimized, or performed.
Instead, they treat purpose as infrastructure—something that supports people quietly through everyday actions:
Reading something that matters
Writing to clarify thought
Revising with care
Asking a real question
Being reviewed without fear
Participating without needing certainty
These everyday actions become the way purpose is sustained, even when life is hard.
"That ecstatic heartbeat you're hearing is me seeing the splendor of this unbelievable experiential-learning opportunity... By what divine offices do our students arrive amongst the angels!"
"Humbled by this work, most truly."
Larry A. Rosenthal
Goldman School of Public Policy
UC Berkeley
A Time for Purpose
Volume 3: Universities of Practice - A landmark work establishing Applied Purpose Science as a field of inquiry
"A landmark work establishing Applied Purpose Science as a field of inquiry"
"Exceptional, field-shaping work addressing documented problems with coherent alternative framework"
"Fundamental reframing of when and how people enter scholarly practice"
Supporting Youth: Net proceeds from all book purchases directly support youth, teens, and adolescents as they discover and find their purpose.
The Naming Gap
Living Life, Listening to Others
"A complete, cohesive, and potentially field-defining work—not just a good book, but an important one."
The space between what people are already doing
and what systems know how to see
"Bridges academic rigor and accessibility—provides language for something countless people experience but have never been able to articulate."
"Most of these people were blooming all along. They were just doing it in places no one was looking."
This book explores how experience is lived without language, how responsibility is carried without recognition, and why people feel capable but unlocated.
Rooted in Fuller Road. Built on safe space conversations. Written from decades of listening.
12 Chapters Available Now
Read the complete book exploring silence, perception, recognition, and belonging.
View All ChaptersAI Policy & Certification
Policy on the Integrated and Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence
All Lab members must complete AI policy training and certification before contributing to scholarly work.
This ensures human accountability, research integrity, and compliance with the highest ethical standards.
Behavioral Health Literacy: Understanding the Naming Gap
Groundbreaking research examining how African American college students develop understanding of mental and behavioral health—revealing a systematic institutional failure and low-cost interventions with immediate impact.
Key Discovery
The Naming Gap
Student Capacity
100% demonstrate peer support
Recognition
0% initially identify as such
Here's How We Can Partner
We work with schools, colleges, and organizations to strengthen career experiences with purpose support
Taking the First Step
Career-Connected Pathways to Purpose
Learn how we help schools and universities turn existing internships and career experiences into meaningful pathways toward purpose—without disrupting current systems.
Learn About Our ApproachUniversities of Practice
Starting with Internships. Growing into Purpose.
Discover a new way of learning that begins with real-world experience and helps people make meaning of what they are already doing—across any setting where people learn by doing.
Explore the FrameworkAlready offering internships, work-based learning, or career experiences?
A Safe Space to Create What's Next
Creativity, Innovation, and the Power of Collaboration
We believe that the most meaningful ideas do not emerge under pressure, performance, or perfection. They emerge when people feel safe enough to show up, curious enough to explore, and connected enough to create together.
This is an invitation into a different kind of space—one built not on competition or credentials, but on trust, participation, and shared purpose.
Why Safe Space Matters
Innovation doesn't begin with answers.
It begins with permission.
Permission to:
- • ask questions without knowing the language yet,
- • contribute before feeling "ready,"
- • learn by doing,
- • and be human in the process.
Safe space is not about comfort or agreement.
It is about dignity, patience, and respect—the conditions that allow creativity to surface and collaboration to last.
When people are not afraid of being judged, measured, or excluded, they bring their full imagination, not just their résumé.
Creativity as a Collective Act
We see creativity as something that happens between people, not inside isolated individuals.
It shows up when:
ideas are shaped in conversation
insights build on lived experience
differences are treated as assets, not obstacles
In this space, creativity is not owned.
It is shared, iterative, and alive.
You don't have to be an expert to participate.
You become more capable through participation.
Innovation Without Extraction
Too often, innovation takes without giving back.
We choose a different path.
voluntary participation
transparent intentions
clear boundaries
shared learning
No one is mined for ideas.
No one is reduced to data.
No one is rushed toward outcomes they didn't choose.
Innovation, here, is a relationship, not a transaction.
An Invitation to Participate
You are welcome here if you are:
- • curious about purpose, learning, health, or work,
- • interested in creating alongside others,
- • willing to listen, try, reflect, and grow.
You don't need the right words.
You don't need permission.
You don't need to prove anything.
You only need the willingness to show up and engage.
The Future Is Built Together
The challenges we face—disconnection, burnout, inequality, loss of meaning—cannot be solved alone.
They require:
- • imagination rooted in care,
- • innovation grounded in ethics,
- • and collaboration held by trust.
This is a space for that work.
A space to experiment.
A space to learn.
A space to build what comes next—together.