Shelly Tygielski is the author of the highly-acclaimed book, Sit Down to Rise Up: How Radical Self-Care Can Change the World, a Gold winner of the Nautilus Book Award and a finalist for the Fall 2021 Big Idea Book Club. She is also the founder of Pandemic of Love, a global, grass-roots, volunteer-led mutual aid community that has directly matched over 2.3 million people since March of 2020, accounting for close to $70+ million in direct transactions. Her work has been featured in over 100 media outlets, including CNN Heroes of 2020, Forbes, Upworthy, The Kelly Clarkson Show, CBS This Morning, Oprah Daily, People Magazine, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Shelly has been hailed by individuals from President Joe Biden to Arianna Huffington, and Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn to Maria Shriver. She is a trauma-informed mindfulness teacher named one of the “12 Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement” by Mindful Magazine in 2019. She teaches formalized self-care and resilience practices at organizations around the world, especially to underserved and traumatized populations, and is widely regarded as a self-care activist. From the front lines of the Ukrainian war to the streets of South Side Chicago, Shelly shows up in spaces to serve without hesitation.

Shelly’s new book, How We Ended Racism: Realizing a New Possibility in One Generation, co-authored by Justin Michael Williams, is due out October 2023 from Sounds True.