Mindfulness-based Emotional and Social Intelligence
The Brighton Jones mindfulness program fosters compassion in our culture, our client relationships, and our broader community.
Compassion is a core value at Brighton Jones and something we see as essential to fulfilling our mission. Our unique approach to wealth management is predicated upon a deeper understanding of our clients’ lives and the ability to connect their financial decisions to their broader goals and values. We are as invested in their happiness as we are in their balance sheet.
Mindfulness-based Emotional and Social Intelligence (MESI) is a training program we have developed to enable our employees, clients, and community to hone the skills and practices that help us be fully present and act intentionally in our lives and relationships.
MESI focuses on self-awareness, intentional management of emotions, recognition of other people’s emotions, and compassion. Our team is more focused, more effective, and happier as a result. And those benefits translate directly to our clients: our advisors are better listeners, better connected to the emotions associated with money, and more attuned to how finances relate to broader wellbeing.
The results we’ve seen have been so powerful that it’s led us to offer mindfulness training to clients and to adapt and share MESI workshops and curriculum with other organizations in the community.
In 2018, Washington State University’s Honors College introduced the MESI Certificate with the goal of teaching happiness as a life skill and providing students with the tools to improve their performance, relationships, and health. Through innovative coursework, workshops, local and global service projects, and guest speakers, the MESI Certificate trains students in mindfulness, self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and compassion.
Meet the Facilitators
Cory Custer
Cory supports the Brighton Jones mission of helping people live richer lives by promoting the practice of compassion, a core value of the company. As director of compassion, he takes a leadership role with respect to the company’s MESI initiative, philanthropic efforts, and anything else to foster an ethos of compassion and put compassion into action.
Bonnie Gerlaugh
Bonnie brings a decade of experience in facilitation, coaching, and curriculum development to her role empowering people at Brighton Jones. Focused on connecting people with themselves and others, Bonnie leads and develops MESI workshops and facilitates retreats worldwide. In a nutshell, she’s in the business of empowering better humans.
What We're Working On
How to Welcome and Work With Your Emotions
Challenging emotions are a natural response to the uncertainty we are facing as a society. Unfortunately, it’s also natural for us to resist these emotions.
Perfect for You: Reimagining Life’s Challenges as Opportunities
A wonderful feature of our MESI practices is that they are all empirically testable by you. You’re the sole judge of their effectiveness.
Staying MESI in Messy Times
Mindfulness is not only a necessary component of living a happier life, but it is also a skill we can learn and get better at through daily practice.
Brighton Jones Goes to School
At WSU and UW, Cory Custer and Molly Norton taught classes about two topics—mindfulness and philanthropy—we consider essential to living a richer life.
WATCH: Jon Jones on the Art and Science of Happiness
In a commencement speech at WSU, Brighton Jones CEO Jon Jones explored research and insights into happiness, compassion, and emotional intelligence.
Meditation on the Job? Just Your Typical First Day at Brighton Jones
Brighton Jones is not your typical workplace—the energy is contagious and it is a breath of fresh air to work somewhere that values how you get things done as much as why.