Bonnie Benard

For over 25 years, Bonnie Benard has helped families, schools, and communities create developmentally supportive and empowering environments that nurture young people's healthy development and life success. She develops resources, provides training and professional development, and presents to national and international audiences best practices in the field of prevention and resilience/youth development theory and policy.

As Senior Program Associate at WestEd, Benard has led approximately 500 workshops and given over 100 keynote speeches at conferences throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia. She co-developed and leads workshops in the application of the California Department of Education's Healthy Kids Survey's Resilience & Youth Development Module, which surveys students throughout California on their perceptions of supports and opportunities in their schools, homes, communities, and peer groups. Based on Benard’s theoretical resilience framework, the Healthy Kids Survey's Resilience & Youth Development Module was mandated in 2003 by the California Department of Education for all California school districts.

Benard's work has directly affected national policy. Title IV (Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities) of the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires that school districts across the country now consider resilience factors (e.g., caring adults in their school) along with risk factors (e.g., bullying and harassment at school) in their school assessments. This major change in policy was a direct result of Benard's fifteen years of promoting resilience and the connection between social and emotional development and learning. Because of her work, schools and districts can now monitor whether they are providing the critical development supports and opportunities that promote healthy development and learning.

Benard has written widely on prevention and resilience/youth development theory and practice, most recently in her acclaimed 2004 book, Resiliency: What We Have Learned. As a Research Associate at WestEd's former Western Center for Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities, she authored Fostering Resiliency in Kids: Protective Factors in the Family, School, and Community (1991), which introduces resiliency theory and application to the fields of prevention and education. Distributed to thousands of individuals, organizations, and state and federal agencies throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia, this publication has been credited as a pioneering work that began to move the prevention field from a "deficit" approach that saw youth as problems toward a "strength-based" approach known as youth development, which views youth as resources.

Karen Pittman, international leader of the youth development movement, credits Bonnie’s work in resiliency as one of the three forces undergirding the shift from deficit-based prevention to asset-based youth development during the 1990s.

Based on Benard’s resiliency work and using some of her training tools, the Alberta, Canada Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission in 1995 created “You Can Make A Difference," a province-wide media campaign of videos, public service announcements, and other support materials.

For her leading work in prevention and resiliency, Benard received the 1992 Award of Excellence from the National Prevention Network; the 1995 Paul Templin Award for Service by WestEd’s former Western Center for Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities; the 1997 Spirit of Crazy Horse Award from the Black Hills Reclaiming Youth seminars for her advocacy of resilience and strength-based practice; and the 2002 WestEd Paul D. Hood Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field.

Prior to joining WestEd, Benard served as a consultant to several state and federal prevention initiatives and as a research specialist and writer for a statewide prevention organization.

Benard received a BA in English and an MSW, both from the University of Missouri, Columbia.