DBA Leadership and Master Global Leadership Program Chair, Academic Chair Global Mental Health Confer- ence, Sofia University Dr. Dorote Lucci
Associate Vice President (AVP) of Global Engagement, Sofia University Yali Wang
Dear Participants, Welcome to the 2026 Sofia University Global Conference on Advancing Mental Health. It is our great honor to welcome you to the fourth year of this evolving global conversation—one that continues to cross disciplines, cultures, generations, and ways of knowing in our shared inquiry into what it means to be well, to be human, and ultimately, to flourish. This year, our theme, “Embodiment, Integration, and Whole Person’s Mental Health in the VUCA Era,” takes us one step further in the journey we began together. In previous years, we have asked how mental health might be reimagined. This year, we ask: How do we embody it? How do insight, research, consciousness, emotion, resilience, and meaning become lived experience? How do we remain grounded in our bodies and connected to one another while navigating a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, technological acceleration, uncertainty, and change? And how do we create the conditions not simply for surviving these transformations, but for human flourishing within them? Our conference is intentionally designed as a single-track journey. Rather than separating disciplines into parallel conversa- tions, we invite them to encounter one another. Across our gathering, we will move through consciousness and perception, emotion and resilience, sleep and dreams, prenatal and early human development, the needs of youth and the journey of gracefully aging, dignity and public health, technology and human trust, recovery and belonging, leadership, adult develop- ment, legacy, and flourishing. The thread connecting these conversations is embodiment—local as individuals and global as community. Mental health is not experienced in abstraction. It is lived through bodies, relationships, families, communities, cultures, environments, organizations, and increasingly, technological systems. A whole-person approach therefore also asks us to think in whole systems. This commitment begins even before the formal conference program. Our pre-conference panel on Sport and Youth Mental Health places young people at the forefront of the conversation, exploring how sport, movement, embodiment, community, and belonging can become pathways to resilience and mental wellbeing. It asks us to listen not only to what young people need, but also to their voices, creativity, agency, and capacity to shape the future. This youth-centered work is further connected to UN Youth Day, our presentation in New York, and the UN Youth Office and their work, extending our confer- ence conversation into a larger global commitment to youth participation, wellbeing, and leadership. It reminds us that advancing mental health cannot be accomplished for the next generation without also working with the next generation. Youth must be participants, partners, and co-creators in imagining the systems and societies in which they will live. In this sense, the conference itself reflects a human developmental journey—from our earliest embodied beginnings, through childhood and youth, into adulthood and leadership, and toward conscious aging, wisdom, and legacy. This developmental perspective asks an especially important question for our time: Can our human capacity for awareness, wisdom, compassion, and responsibility develop alongside the extraordinary technological capabilities we are creating? Perhaps flourishing is not a destination. Perhaps it is an unfolding capacity—to remain present amid uncertainty, to hold greater complexity without losing our grounding, to recognize our interdependence, and to translate awareness into meaningful action. That possibility sits at the heart of this year’s conference. As always, our gathering reflects Sofia University’s commitment to whole-person and transpersonal education and to creating bridges: between science and lived experience; East and West; Global North and Global South; youth and elders; ancient wisdom and emerging research; individual wellbeing and societal transformation; and the local and the global. These bridges matter. They remind us that no single discipline, culture, generation, or worldview holds the complete answer to the challenges before us. Human flourishing emerges through dialogue, relationship, curiosity, and our willingness to learn from one another. Thank you to our speakers, researchers, practitioners, partners, students, youth participants, and global community for bringing your work—and yourselves—into this conversation. Our invitation this year is not simply to talk about mental health. It is to experience, question, connect, participate, and embody what human flourishing might become. Welcome to the 2026 Global Conference on Advancing Mental Health. With deep appreciation, Dr. Dorote Lucci & Yali Wang 2
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