About YOULAB
YOULAB is a global social enterprise providing architecture for human adaptive capacity. We collaborate with people seeking social change, sustainable relationships, and meaningful impact across sectors and around the world.
Purpose
Our beliefs
As one species among millions in a vast, interconnected biosphere, our long-term survival and well-being depend directly on our awareness, on the health of our planet, and our interdependence to the natural world. Human adaptive capacity is multi-faceted — allowing us to navigate environmental change, build resilience, and transform challenges into opportunities for well-being. We exist to explore what and how humans cultivate adaptive capacity, to unlock innate potential and wisdom, and harmonize with nature in stewardship of a shared experience.
That posture keeps us honest. It keeps the work relevant to the actual conditions people face. And it means the capacity we build tends to stay in the room long after we have left it.
Approach
Our approach
Our work combines research, dialogue, advisory, and immersive learning. No off-the-shelf answers — each engagement begins with the question in front of you and how it feels.
That's why The Lab was born — to provide spaces for exploring those questions and feelings in on-site and customized settings to include the natural world. We call ourselves a lab because we experiment and examine as much as we advise and support. The work is iterative and evidence-led — we learn with the people we work alongside rather than delivering fixed answers from a distance.
What started as a listening project in 2009, along the US/Mexico Border, became an ongoing global listening project — a world-wide compilation of stories and narratives about human adaptivity and the human experience. Book out Spring 2027.
Our values
What can you expect?
- Presence
- Privacy
- High support / high challenge
- Patience & respect
- Integrity & ethical decision making
- Collaboration
- Personalized experiences — all our work is emergent and specific to you
We take your growth and privacy seriously, and want to create relationships based on trust and respect. As a result, we are committed to ethical marketing. We won't share your experiences in marketing materials (photo, video, or written) without your consent, and only document your work with materials you've reviewed.
Provenance
Where we come from
The YOULAB, formerly The Contact Project, was founded in 2007 as a global social enterprise providing platforms for developing human adaptive capacity. Through innovative research, bespoke engagements, and immersive experiences, we collaborate with people seeking social change, sustainable relationships, and meaningful impact across sectors and around the world.
Developed in 2007 by our founder, Dr. Jennifer Kai Lynne, the Engaged Identity™ approach was refined through more than fifteen years of global research and engagement. Today, it serves as the foundation for the Architecture for Human Adaptive Capacity™ and the HAC Model™. Bridging inner development with systemic transformation, our legacy continues to empower leaders, individuals, and communities to adapt, thrive, and shape a future where wellbeing is for all.
Meet the founder
Dr. Jennifer Kai Lynne
I've spent the last twenty-five years exploring human adaptive capacity through the lens of embodied consciousness and enactive cognition in our physical, spiritual, and relational worlds. At the heart of my work are three fundamental questions:
- What is consciousness, and where does it live?
- What innate capacities do we hold as human beings to transform and make meaning?
- How do we contribute to our own and the larger communities wellbeing?
We all comprise a unique, individual universe that is in constant relationship with a multitude of interdependent systems — from the biological, to the relational, and the existential. This is the intersection of the human experience.
The practitioners collective
People we're honored to work alongside
The YOULAB is a global collective of scientists, coaches, organizational, leadership and learning advisors, researchers, spiritual and ritual guides, and somatic practitioners specializing in human adaptive capacity.
With some of the best contemplative and somatic practitioners around the world, our labs offer options to work with these amazing professionals for integrated 360 support in developing awareness and adaptability — and we highly recommend their work to everyone interested in inner development, wellbeing, and exploring being human.
