A former community college administrator, Cecile has her doctorate in education from Stanford. She is active in the Seattle Area Happiness Initiative and the Transition Town movement, an effort to build community and sustainability at the local level. She lives in Seattle and spends the winter in Palo Alto, teaching in the Stanford Health Improvement Program.

Her current focus is The Community Happiness Circle:
Discover how a small group of committed citizens can come together to support each other in the pursuit of personal happiness and social change for the greater good. Learn about the new research on happiness and change. Explore  the keys to happiness: connection, control, calling, and celebration and how to form a caring culture by building community, discovering our particular passion, and living with joie de vivre. The community happiness circle is part of a long tradition of people coming together to change their own lives and create a culture concerned about the common good. This is part of the Seattle Area Happiness Initiative (www.sustainableseattle.org), a project working to create awareness about Gross National Happiness as an alternative to the Gross Domestic Product.