Meet Megan
About Megan
Dr. Megan Shen is a social psychologist, research professor, author, and keynote speaker who helps leaders and organizations navigate burnout, loss, and uncertainty. Through her writing, research, and speaking, she applies research frameworks to create practical strategies that foster resilience, hope, and lasting growth - even in the face of life’s toughest challenges.
Dr. Shen earned her Ph.D. from Baylor University in 2012. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2015. Following that, she was an Assistant Professor at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City (2015-2021). Currently, she is an Associate Professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, where her research focuses on helping patients and families navigate advanced illness and end-of-life planning. She also dedicates her time to writing and speaking on resilience, hope, grief, and burnout, translating her research into real-world strategies that help individuals, leaders, and organizations thrive in the face of uncertainty and challenge.
Her Geekwire talk, How to Fight against Burnout and Build Hopeful and Resilient Organizations by Embracing Challenges, Grief, and Loss bridges her work and experience with dying patients and their families to apply lessons learned on building resilience and hope amidst challenges and loss more broadly. Her work with organizations and business settings is featured through her writings at Entrepreneur.com.
For over a decade, Dr. Shen has examined the communication, decision-making, and social support for patients living with advanced illness to develop practical tools to help them thrive amidst challenging diagnoses. She applies a health equity lens to her work to ensure these strategies meet the needs of diverse patient populations. Her work has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 2015, including multiple research grants as Principal Investigator such as a K07 career award, R01s, R44s, and R21s. Dr. Shen’s scientific contributions have earned numerous honors and awards, including a MERIT award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and recognition by the Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine as an Outstanding Research Scholar. She is a fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, recognizing her outstanding research in behavioral science, health, and palliative medicine.
Empowering individuals and teams to thrive with resilience and hope through life’s toughest challenges and biggest losses.
Her work has been published in top academic journals including Cancer, JAMA Network Open, Supportive Care in Cancer, and Psycho-Oncology. Her writing has also been published in USA Today, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, the Hill Reporter, Invisible Magazine, and the Thinking Republic. She is a regular contributor to Harvard’s Bill of Health blog and is a columnist at Psychology Today with her featured column, “How to Grow Hope.”
Dr. Shen applies scientific frameworks, enriched with her own experiences supporting patients with serious illness as well as overwhelmed leaders, to help individuals cultivate resilience, hope, and breakthrough - transforming life’s challenges into opportunities for joy, growth, and lasting impact