ASU+GSV 2026 Summit | Tuesday, April 14, 2026, 7:45 am-8:15 am
Speakers
- Goldie Hawn
- Carole Basile, ASU
- Deborah Quazzo, GSV Ventures
Key Takeaways
- Goldie Hawn and ASU College of Education Dean Carole Basile discuss the MindUp program, Hawn's evidence-based initiative teaching children about their brains as a foundation for emotional self-regulation and learning.
- Now reaching over 7 million students in 45 countries, MindUp integrates neuroscience (teaching kids about the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and brain breaks) directly into the academic curriculum rather than treating social-emotional learning as separate.
- The session announces a partnership between MindUp and ASU to build an AI-powered "public utility" that would give any parent, teacher, or community member just-in-time guidance combining instructional support with preventative mental health strategies.
- Basile argues that professional development alone has failed and that the field needs to "liberate content" so everyone can be an educator, while Hawn insists that no amount of curriculum innovation will matter if children's frenzied, anxious brains are not addressed first.
Notable Quotes
"Why are we not teaching the brain and pieces of the brain to understand a little bit more about their emotion, about their ability to self-regulate, when we ask them to learn?"
ā Goldie Hawn
"We don't need more professional learning for teachers. It's not working. It hasn't worked. We put trillions of dollars into it and it's not getting us anywhere."
ā Carole Basile
"A frenzied brain cannot learn. So we need to do both at the same time."
ā Goldie Hawn
"I want this to be like you turn on water, the water comes. Everybody should have access to this. Everybody should have this as a public utility."
ā Carole Basile
"One of the kids in Colorado got into trouble. He said, 'My amygdala wasn't thinking and my prefrontal cortex was overactive.' It was hilarious."
ā Goldie Hawn
Full Transcript
I can't tell you how excited I am to be on stage with both of these women who I admire so deeply but I do have to start by thanking Goldie because you made my parents cool and the way you made my parents cool is like I grew up in I'm 65 and so and late 60s early 70s every week the one thing you can set your clock to was watching Rowan and Martins laugh in and I thought the fact that my parents had us all watch Rowan and Martins laughing you're all too young for this but anyway was made them so cool it was remarkable so thank you thank you thank you you made you are very welcome you made mom and dad cool which is which is you know not always easy to do with moms and dads so it's good Goldie Hawn is really quite a marvel she is an Oscar winner Hollywood icon she's late now a lead actress in over 25 films TV shows she's a great mom she's a great grandmother a great partner and in 2003 I mean because people say like why Goldie Hawn I'm like okay let me let me tell you why Goldie Hawn so 2003 you just started you started the Goldie Hawn Foundation which which you built and what has built up to become mind up and we'll get into that with Carol as well your initiative for schools reaching over 7 million students today in 45 countries I'd love you to talk about what brought you to that decision really early I mean it was and when you did that not a lot of people were thinking about mental health for kids and things like that so really what what what drove you there what caught your attention about what was happening with kids was it your own kids whatever so we would just love to hear the Goldie Hawn story about about how you got here okay well first of all I can't bear an unhappy child it's very very very interesting for me because it really upsets me children should be happy they should have a good life they should have an enjoyable childhood but what I was learning and what I was seeing it was really alarming is is that I saw that children were actually committing suicide at 10 years old and when I started looking at some of these stats I thought wait a minute I was doing a documentary on happiness believe it or not because I felt in search of joy it was important to experience this feeling but then I realized that our children were not experiencing it either so I took everything I was studying on my documentary and I created a thing called mind up because what I learned was is that kids were never learning anything about their brain and we're asking them to use it and understanding their brain gives them some agency to their own emotions so they're able to understand part of this why are we not teaching the brain and pieces of the brain to understand a little bit more about their emotion about their ability to self-regulate when we ask them to learn because that they go together learning and also understanding ourselves like Plato said learn learned about yourself and then learn about other things the reality here is is that I couldn't understand it I'm not an educator obviously I came from other areas right I had my own learning disability I was I am I guess dyslexic although I'm happy as a clam being that but the reality is is that there are so many things that were didn't make any sense to me so I pulled together a group of scientists a group of end of neuroscientists positive psychology is psychiatrist a scientist and and so forth and I put together this program and I put it together like I produced a movie I had an idea why not do it I didn't have any thinking about should I shouldn't I because I don't argue why do we ask children to learn about anything without teaching about what they learn with so I after I put this together I researched it and it was unbelievable but here's are the research I could make myself happier I work better with children I had better experience with math and English this I we did I don't know since for last for ten years we did research on this I didn't do it I didn't pay for it but we had it done and even in Portugal where they did research the same came out the same our children were healthier they were happier which actually made me cry when I found out that we could create solutions and and we're here today and today is a very exciting time I'm really happy to be here might I say and it's wonderful to see everyone confabbing together when 7,500 people not doing it together which could really be a mosh pit like we've never seen in their life but just together is great well we want our classrooms to have community what's happening today is our children are not well we all know that so today I'd like to enter interject that the people that we want to learn and teach and inspire and excite our children that are frenzied children that are not always present children who have anxiety we have some really serious issues so there's two things here we have to focus in on the mental health of our children because otherwise you'll have nothing to teach and no one to learn because they can't so if a child doesn't feel strong in themselves understand their brain know how to understand their reactivity to be able to self manage their reactivity to learn empathy because empathy can be taught kindness can be taught and we have these areas of being human where we're building greater human capital so if can we build human capital brilliant smart minds that know how to actually strategize understand be happy bring up children that are happy how can we do that and continue to move in the area that we're moving we're very excited about AI I am too I'm doing the AI and and and mind up because it's the way to go but our children and our people in the world sometimes are not ready to learn because they're too upset they have issues around a frenzied brain cannot learn so we need to do both at the same time and there's no reason why we can't integrate I've been doing it for 23 years integrating it into the academia introducing it into and also including our parents so we can do a holistic way of focusing in on our children on the future of America and the world and be able to actually learn as well so this is why I did this program and I think it's no time like the present to be able to understanding that learning is no different than being brain fit so brain fitness is also goes along with learning we can create all kinds of systems but are they excited enough about learning to use them and will they get lost in the very thing that we're creating today I love that you called it you called it inter-curriculum somewhere I'd love that phrase that was terrific let me go to Carol for a minute just because one of the things I love about Carol and about ASU broadly is that marginal solutions are not on y'all's agenda or radar when you do things you want to be doing it for impact and for scale and to affect more people and more students and more children so I just love to hear I think you all are in the process of setting up a full-on partnership and I'd love to hear you know what was attractive about this you know what was what it was interesting about ASU partnering with mind up and the program and how the two of you see scale driving from you have some you have scale already but there's more to there's more to be had so and to your point we need every child to have this so love to hear your perspective on how where do we go from here so I'm sitting here as a dean of a very large teacher preparation program College of Education and I have always felt a number of years ago that you know the only way you could come and you could learn from us was to come and take classes or to get a degree and in fact I always felt that that made no sense that everybody today should be an educator in some way shape or form so the question became how do we liberate our content how do we give that content in in all kinds of ways right to start thinking about what does it look like if we can give every parent every tutor every grandparent every community member ways in which they can also work with kids everybody should have this information and they should get it from a valid source so a number of years ago we created something called our community educator learning hub it now has 200 nano courses but the problem is it's static so then comes Goldie and we said all right so look what's not there right is all the things that mind up has because as she's you know articulating well these two things have to go together if we say there's a struggling reader not only do we have to address the fact that we've got somebody who needs to learn better the skills of reading we also have to deal with the word struggling or if we say there's a kid who's excited about my granddaughter's really into crested geckos so crested geckos let me just use that you know then we've got to figure out not only how do we teach her right how do we do this around science and how do we get her more interested we also have to deal with the excited part and how do we continue to do that and how does she use her brain right and how do we as educators help kids to do this so the idea is to take the content that we have what we know about teaching and learning blend that with what mind up has around thinking about preventative mental health thinking about the brain thinking about things like brain breaks and bringing these two things together planting all of that into AI right in a way that we provide together the valid content that people can use and then as I always say
I think we need to think about how do we make it a public utility? How do we make this something that everybody can then have access to to say I have a kid who and actually get the kinds of answers both on the instructional side and on supporting the mental health side and the human part of this. It will be distributed through the public school system. I think it could be distributed in many ways that we couldn't before.
One of the reasons why I went and thought to myself two years ago I had teachers, trainers all over the United States and Europe and so forth. It was such heavy lifting and you weren't able to really get the kind of training that was basically synchronized to exactly what should have been done because obviously they're humans training. I said okay I don't want to be a training organization. I want to be an innovative organization continuing to create new ways and things for children and teachers and parents and so forth.
I thought I could just do this in AI. This was two and a half three years ago. Now we are building different interesting ways of training. It isn't necessarily always your regular kind of training but it's animation.
It's ways to do it and we're excited because then we can give it to many people. It's accessible to many more people. When we've got something like this we want as many teachers, parents, people to be able to understand the very thing that we're all trying to do. Whether you're going to teach math or STEM or whatever you're doing it's much more facile to be able to get it out in the world.
It's an exciting time. Either one of you give maybe the audience a more tactile example of how does MindUp work today? Is it nudges? Is it suggestions?
I appreciate it's parents, teachers. How do you all operate today and how does it impact teachers and children? Obviously you're already out there on AI. How do you see it moving forward in terms of a product road map thing?
It would be really interesting. Because of need. There is necessity out there. I think that's one of the areas that we don't it's not arguable at this point.
Solutions are everything. We can hold up the dirty glass about what's going on but we need to find solutions. A lot of what happens today is we say well we think professional learning is a silver bullet. Everybody says we just need more professional learning and teachers.
We don't. It's not working. It hasn't worked. We put trillions of dollars into it and it's not getting us anywhere.
People are turning over too fast. We've got to find other ways. This isn't just about teachers. I want this to be like you turn on water, the water comes.
Everybody should have access to this. Everybody should have this as a public utility that says I've got a kid who whatever that is and you can do something about it in time. You don't have to go oh I've got to talk to my kid's teacher. My teacher said my kid has XYZ.
Whatever that is but I don't know how to help. This was COVID. Kids weren't in school and parents didn't know what to do. They didn't know the tips around how do you help a kid decode?
How do you help a kid do this? They don't know. We've got to give this to people. People have to get it in a way that is not only just the content part of it, the instructional part of it.
They also have to get the human being part of it, the brain part of it. They have to know how to do that and they have to know how to talk to a kid and they have to know how to recognize what's happening when it's happening. They need it just in time. They need to turn on the tap and it needs to be there.
It needs to come from a valid source. I think that's the beauty of what we're trying to create. Yes, we want to give this to educators. We want every teacher to have this as well.
It's got to be bigger than that. It has to be more than that. I think that's where we're trying to see what we can actually do here. What are the stories that we can begin to tell that help people to see how these things start to come together?
We've always done them very separately. Emotional learning is over here. The constructions over here. These two things have to come together.
I think that the differentiation that I felt around MindUp was I didn't know what social and emotional learning was. I had no idea. I was in Vancouver. I was up there because my son was playing hockey.
I went to visit, did a lot of conferences about brain and meditation and things like that, understanding how basically incredibly powerful it was on brain fitness. This is the area where I looked at and thought, oh my God, this is unbelievable. We have to be able to do this. That's pretty much where I took this with the fearlessness of going out there to teach brain in the classroom.
It wasn't social and emotional learning. It was brain science because the brain science is the one very funny story. One of the kids in Colorado, Basalt School, got into trouble. That whole school was a MindUp school.
The teacher took him into the principal. He said, what happened? He said, my prefrontal cortex, my amygdala wasn't thinking and my prefrontal cortex was overactive. It was hilarious.
We think that kids don't like their brain or they don't understand it. They love it. They're telling me on their first grade where their brain is and whatever. This is what you want.
One little girl said she was pulled off the curb. Do you know what saved our lives? The aunt said she thought she did because she pulled her off the curb. She said, no, your amygdala.
When you start changing the vocabulary of how you speak and how you think, then the mothers and the fathers come in and go, oh my God, I need this program. What's a brain break? I need one. The kids take it three times a day.
They understand that they even come in sometimes and say, I think I need a brain break. They're eight years old. If they do need a brain break, we all need a brain break. That's one of the reasons why it's important as fast as we're going, to slow down.
It's got to happen. Then we can think better. We can feel better. Just remember when children say they can make myself happier, that one did me in.
We all have to get happier. We have to find our ways in order to actually jump over some of the hurdles that we go through and enjoy our lives for a period of time. A little bit every day. That's what we help our children understand.
All this dialogue and language is brought into the problem, brought into math. One of our teachers took math tables for mindful movement because everybody has to move. Kids can't sit there like this. Jumping jacks.
Two times two is four. Four times four is eight. This is a classroom that was engaged in having fun. We have to keep our children inspired.
These are our children, but you know what? I'm still a child. I have to be inspired. I need all of those things.
We're not just children, but we do know that our children are going to grow up. Please let us be smart enough to know that we have to stay very involved in their mental health. That's kind of a holistic look at how we build these systems. Why isn't mental health brought into every single conversation?
How would I do this? What's the best way to go about it? Why do I feel anxious? How can I move myself into a different area?
This is called metacognition. Do we have metacognition? Do kids know what that is? We can watch ourselves.
I can watch myself do that. They have to learn to watch themselves, too. We have so much to share with them. It's so beautiful.
They have to know how amazing their brain is. Potential is something we'll never know, but we have to be able to give them the opportunity to serve their potential, whatever it might be. I think that this kind of partnership that we can create on this, and I think it's a brilliant idea, is engaging our learning and our creativity and all the things we dream about and bringing into it brain fitness, brain knowledge, and how we're able to manage our emotions that hijack all of our thinking. That's not all I have to say, but I'm going to stop.
Love that. You are remarkable. One of the things I deeply love about this is Lord knows you did not need to create another legacy. You have the greatest legacy in history.
I was listening to a young actress do an interview the other day, and she was like, who is your inspiration? I was like, that is awesome. You did this out of your own heart. You can hear that on the stage.
It is incredible. I think the fact that you two came together is a gift and that you're sharing it with us today is just, you know, I cannot express more gratitude. Is there anything else as we sort of finish up the conversation? I want to ask you a question about what you think about this legacy and what it could look like in partnership with Arizona State.
Anything else you want to leave with the group or you care, either one of you or both, in terms of what you hope 50 years from now, when we are probably all gone, is what this looks like? You know, it's one step in front of the other. It always has been. You can't build anything without putting one step in front of the other.
We are doing that now. We are doing that now. The idea is that we don't give up. It's the give up of itches in the world that can't sit at our table.
You actually can't give up. And you have to dream big. The only thing is that you can't be unrealistic. And the other thing that I would say is that remember that we can always talk about what's wrong, but one thing we have to remember is that we have to find solutions to what's wrong.
It isn't just complaining. It's looking at how do we look at this strategically and say, how can I build a healthier world? And right now, we're starting here. But to build a healthy world is to start this way.
So it isn't like it can never be done. People said, you'll never teach children about the brain. You'll never have three brain break meditations in the classroom. You'll never do that.
And I thought about it. And I said, well, I don't know what I'm going to do. And I said, let me research this first. And I researched, and it was so extraordinary, the shifts and changes in our children.
I said, watch me. I didn't know what I was doing except that I cared about kids. And I took it down all over Canada, came down to America, and went full bore. Then I went 150,000 children, whatever, in U.K., Portugal.
Next thing I know, it's, like, popping up in all these places. And we're in China, in 13 provinces. I don't have any marketing. None.
And the only thing that I had was a beautiful program, and I didn't want me, my name, to be ahead of it. I tried to name my, I don't know, thing different, like, you know, gold, whatever, light foundation. No, it ended up being mine, but I wanted MindUp to be the star. So what we have to do is plan ahead, a dream, but know how to actually make it happen.
So solutions are everything. And I think that's my parting. And I think you're, you have a brainchild here. I think it's going to happen.
And I'd like to see it happen in our lifetime. I think we're going to know more about learning than we have ever, ever known before. I think behind the scenes, right, all the data, all the things, that we're, we are going to know more about how people learn more about how kids learn more about how they're feeling. We're going to have to, have to, have to address this.
We cannot continue to just separate these things. I think it's just going to happen on its own. So we're excited. We're very excited.
All right. Well, I'm excited. So thank you both so much.
This transcript was put together by our friend Philippos Savvides from Arizona State University. The original transcript and additional summit resources are available on GitHub. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.