Joanna de Pena

Joanna de Peña is a performance psychology educator, speaker, and founder of Top Notch Scholars, a youth-leadership organization helping inner-city students lead with clarity, confidence, and purpose. Grounded in her doctoral research and personal story of transforming adversity into growth, Joanna bridges psychology and storytelling to address the growing youth mental health crisis. Her work empowers audiences to turn stress into strategy and emotion into motion, proving that one breath, one choice, and one step at a time can restore calm, build resilience, and spark lasting transformation.