Cassie Mogilner Holmes

Cassie Mogilner Holmes is a Professor of Marketing and Behavioral Decision Making at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. Holmes studies happiness, highlighting the role of time. Her research examines such questions as how focusing on time (rather than money) increases happiness, how the meaning of happiness changes over the course of one’s lifetime and how much happiness people enjoy from extraordinary and ordinary experiences. Across these inquiries, her findings highlight the high level of happiness that stems from personally connecting with people and with the present moment.

Holmes’ research has been published in such top-tier academic journals as Psychological Science and the Journal of Consumer Research. Popular accounts of her work have been featured on NPR and have appeared in such publications as The Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Scientific American and the Boston Globe. Her work on giving time was featured in New York Times Magazine’s “32 Innovations that Will Change Your Tomorrow.” She was identified among the Best 40 Business Professors Under 40 in Poets & Quants, and she received the Early Career Award for her distinguished scholarly contributions to her field from both the Association of Consumer Research and the Society of Consumer Psychology.

Holmes developed and teaches the popular course Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design, which helps students thrive in their personal and professional lives. Pulling insights from research in psychology and behavioral decision making, as well as her own research, this course provides students with ideas and tools to apply to improve their day-to-day living and the design of their career and life overall. Based on this course, Holmes wrote the book Happier Hour. This book provides a practical guide for how to think about and spent time to live a more joyful life.

Holmes is a faculty affiliate with The UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, an interdisciplinary organization dedicated to the research, education, and practice of kindness.

Prior to joining UCLA Anderson, Holmes was a tenured faculty member at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was an award-winning teacher of strategic brand management. She earned her Ph.D. in marketing from Stanford and her B.A. from Columbia as a psychology major.

Education

• Ph.D. Marketing, 2009, Stanford Graduate School of Business
• B.A. Psychology (cum laude), 2002, Columbia University