Positive Psychology CenterJohn Hollway is a Senior Fellow at Penn’s Positive Psychology Center and an Associate Dean at Penn Carey Law School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as Executive Director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration and Justice, a research and policy center dedicated to improving the quality of the criminal justice system in the U.S. John’s work helps individuals and organizations in many contexts create environments of engagement and flourishing, confronting challenges and turning negative occurrences into opportunities for quality improvement.
He helped Penn Carey Law become the first law school in the country with well-being as a part of the required curriculum for graduation, and he teaches a course, “Positive Psychology in Legal Practice,” that helps students design and live lives of thriving after law school. John works with firms, government organizations and community members across the country to increase productive dialogue and enhance engagement as a tool for quality improvement. He is a national thought leader on the use of root cause analysis in criminal justice, and is a frequent consultant to criminal justice agencies and corporations on quality improvement and measurement issues.
John has worked with police departments in Madison WI and Seattle WA to improve their interactions with community in the wake of the protests that occurred in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, and has worked with law enforcement, community and others to learn from and make changes after such challenging events as officer-involved shootings, deaths in law enforcement custody, wrongful convictions, among others. He is the author of numerous publications, including Conviction Review Units: A National Perspective (2016), A Systems Approach to Preventing Errors in Criminal Justice (2014), and Killing Time: An 18-Year Odyssey from Death Row to Freedom, winner of the National Independent Book Award for non-fiction in 2011, and one of the Chicago Sun-Times’ Best Books of the Year.
John holds a BA from Penn, a JD with honors from the George Washington University Law School, and a MAPP degree with Distinction from Penn.