Dr. Beck Tench (she/her) has deep and abiding curiosities about how to live well in a radically connected world. She is the Center’s Senior Researcher and Designer. She’s currently on a Listening Tour to understand what practices could we adopt, as a society, to support digital thriving. Beck writes about the tour on her Substack, Making Thriving Visible, every week or so.

Her research focuses on developing skills and a greater capacity for accessing personal wisdom, connecting with others through compassion and friendship, improving the quality of our lives through awareness of life as we’re living it, and mitigating or minimizing the harms of attention-driven digital culture. Beck graduated with her Ph.D. in Information Science at the University of Washington. Her dissertation was on protecting and restoring attention. Before returning to school, she was an exhibit designer in science museums.

Beck was formally trained as a designer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She spent her career before returning to academia helping museums, libraries, and non-profits embrace risk-taking, creativity, and change through technology and personal space-making. Her work from that time was mentioned in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Scientific American, and several books and blogs.