Stephanie Davies

If you've followed Independent Thinking over the years and seen any of our Associates in action, you will know that we like to highlight the fact that education is too important to be taken seriously. And Associate Stephanie Davies is who we turn to when it comes to the hard evidence about why that rings so true.

As someone whose career has spanned being mentored as a stand-up comic by Liverpool comedian John Bishop and training at the prestigious Gesundheit! Institute founded by Patch Adams to a Masters in Laughter, Humour and Personal Growth and setting up her own highly-respected business training top businesses and corporations in the power of laughter, Stephanie knows her onions when it comes to making people cry with laughter.

And she is very much at home bringing this understanding of the power of laughter - it's an academic field of study known as 'gelotology' from the Latin for laughter in case anyone asks you - into schools and classrooms across the UK in recent years.

In fact, so committed is Stephanie to helping schools understand how important laughter and happiness is to well-being, community cohesion and improving school results, she even inaugurated the first ever School Happiness Awards, celebrating teachers, teaching assistants, school leaders, support staff and school communities who put happiness at the heart of all they do.