The core purpose of the University is to transform lives for the benefit of society. Our research group aims to contribute to that purpose by transforming lives through resilience education. Our main question is, how can individuals build resilience and strength when challenged with change and chronic stressful situations? We hope to demonstrate that resilience interventions that empower self-leadership, individual responsibility, challenge appraisals to stress, and social connections can positively impact personality traits that serve as protective resources in the stress-illness relationship, especially the obesity - type 2 diabetes - cardiovascular disease progression.