Jessica Payne

Jessica Payne helps leaders to achieve peak performance by using coping strategies that take advantage of the natural abilities of the brain. She holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and at the University of Notre Dame, where she is the Director of the Sleep Stress and Memory Lab. Dr. Payne’s research and publications explore how sleep and stress independently and interactively influence memory, emotion, performance and creativity. Leaders and consultants in a number of settings draw on Dr. Payne’s expertise to help foster and maintain optimal decision making, communication, and performance.

An engaging teacher and speaker, Dr. Payne received Harvard’s Bok Center Award for teaching excellence; Notre Dame’s Frank O’Malley award for undergraduate teaching and service; and the Laird Cermak Award for contributions to memory research.  Payne has also recently been awarded a major grant from the National Science Foundation, and was selected by the National Academy of Sciences to deliver the Seymour Benzer/Sydney Brenner Lecture.

Dr. Payne completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard University’s Psychology Department. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Arizona; an MA in Experimental Psychology from Mount Holyoke College; and a BA in Psychology from the University of San Diego.