By DEBBIE SnIDErman Positivity Pays Michelle Gielan on happineSS S Sick of negative news? Ex-broadcaster Michelle Gielan was too, enough to leave her career and do something positive for the world. Jaded by the negative stories that left people feeling down, Gielan instead wanted to understand how to talk about negative events in a way that left people feeling empowered and ready to take action. Armed with her background in engineering and journalism experience, she earned a degree in applied positive psychology, studying happiness and human potential at the University of Pennsylvania. She cofounded the Institute for Applied Positive Research, which studies the impacts of transformative journalism on people. She partnered with the Huffington Post to study how viewing positive news impacts everything from athletic performance to business success. More personally, the institute lets her ask questions to understand the effects of news and inform people the way she wants. And it merges all the worlds she's passionate about, Michelle Gielan Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2017.2746281 Date of publication: 8 May 2018 ©iStockphoto/ginvaldS 1942-065X/18©2018IEEE June 2018 iEEE womEn in EnginEEring magazinE 23