DeAnn Wandler-Vukovich is the founder of Live Well University. In addition to her 17 years in higher education, DeAnn holds certificates in mindfulness, meditation, and reiki. She is a Transformational Breath Facilitator and is near completion of her Registered Yoga Teacher training (RYTT200). DeAnn has been Narrative Coach trained and is a certified Brain-Based Coach from the NeuroLeadership Institute, a coaching approach rooted in contemporary neuroscience, using the latest insights into how the brain works to create yet more powerful, positive and transformational changes for the coachee. She runs a private coaching, meditation and yoga practice teaching clients how to find new ways to navigate through their stress patterns, “inner engineer” their path to achieve wellbeing, find their purpose and become the architect of their own joy.

Happiness was a conceptual problem for DeAnn until the day when professional and personal events led to situational depression. Like others, DeAnn tried to power through her newly found mental illness by brute character alone. Because she operated as a high functioning, smiling depressive, her colleagues and family were unaware she was struggling. However, left untreated, her situational depression evolved into clinical depression and on the evening of her 52nd birthday, after responding to a last birthday wish on Facebook, DeAnn took a loaded gun, placed it under her chin and pulled the trigger. 

DeAnn shares her powerful story of unlikely survival and uses her traumatic experience as a vehicle for transformation. She is a public speaker and has addressed audiences ranging from corporations, associations, universities, to faith-based organizations, to military and veterans. She has created and facilitated executive burnout, work/life fulfillment, emotional health and wellbeing trainings for leadership teams across the nation. DeAnn has been published in the Association for Talent and Development (ATD) publication- The Public Manager Magazine, as well as Risk and Insurance Magazine, Casino Journal, and InMilitary. Trained in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) and Mental Health First Aid, she currently serves as on the Mental Health and Recovery Counseling Education and Training National Advisory Committee, as well as the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) Speaker & Conference Bureau Committee and is an active member of the Stark County Suicide Prevention Coalition.

Her mission to share life changing, practical and powerful stress management techniques to those in need caused DeAnn to develop programs combining neuroscience principles with mindfulness and energetic modalities. With heart and hope, DeAnn Wandler-Vukovich blends brain science, spirituality, and a comprehensive action plan for clearing anxiety, lifting mood, and enjoying life fully. She teaches others how to free themselves from the past by reconditioning the mind, move beyond the limits of the known and into the quantum fields of infinite possibilities and lead an extraordinary new life.