Ode to Wonder

envisions, strategizes, and designs cultures and regenerative systems of well-being that restore a sense of belonging and connection.

Founder, Paula Toledo (MAPP)

CMHA Certified Advisor Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace

Advancing Well-being in the Workplace Through Creativity and Connection

Founded by artist, TEDx speaker, and well-being strategist Paula Toledo (B.Comm, MAPP), Ode to Wonder empowers leaders and organizations to evolve from fragmented well-being efforts into cohesive, evidence-based frameworks that nurture social, mental, and creative health.

Her work transforms workplaces into ecosystems of connection and renewal.

With a background in marketing and product innovation at Fortune 500 companies and a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied under Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, Paula collaborates with executive and cultural leaders to reimagine workplaces, guiding them to incorporate the science of well-being and psychological health and safety into their organizational culture.

Science, Art, and Social Change

Paula’s work also lives at the intersection of science, art, and social change, where she bridges cross-disciplinary leaders — Indigenous elders, scientists, physicians and healthcare practitioners, experts in the arts, business, and education — to bolster the arts as a grounding force in transforming individual and societal health through regenerative well-being.

As the Lead Well-being Consultant at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s ‘Art of Wellbeing Lab’, Paula is advancing social prescribing—the world’s most forward-thinking health model—which embeds the strengths of art organizations and the community into healthcare. Her collaborative efforts to form an innovative partnership between the Vancouver Art Gallery and BC Parks Foundation’s PaRx program led to the world’s first indoor–outdoor art and nature prescription, inspired by Emily Carr's artwork and bridging art, nature, and social connection for collective well-being.

Through Ode to Wonder, Paula continues to lead organizations and communities to transform disconnection into cultures of awe, belonging, and creative renewal.

Experience Design

Through her signature Wonder Gatherings™ and awethentIQ@work™ programs, Paula designs immersive, creative experiences that reconnect teams with their sense of awe and wonder, strengthening their appreciation for one another’s strengths.

Her approach blends science and measurement with meaning and performance with presence, generating impact in environments grounded in empathy, trust, and purpose.

A VISION SHAPED BY

LOSS, RENEWAL, CREATIVITY, AND RESILIENCE

As an artist, Paula’s song was featured in Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the most searched-for songs in the history of the internet, and reaffirmed to her that art had quietly been doing what she believed it could and that beauty and connection are never gone, they’re simply waiting to be seen again.

That is what Ode to Wonder brings to organizations: the capacity to see anew, to reconnect, to remember our shared humanity even in uncertainty.

  • Paula’s perspective was shaped by two transformational experiences that revealed the healing power of creativity and belonging.

    “Sixteen years ago, I lost my husband to a mental-health crisis. In the weeks that followed, I remember sitting in a rocking chair in the middle of the night—nursing my newborn while my toddler slept. I felt deep despair but a sense of reassurance that connected me to something larger than myself. My newborn son and I soothed one another. I was giving him life, and my love for him was giving me life. The air was cold, and everything inside me was raw. And in that moment, I realized something that would later define my life’s work: if life can collapse in an instant, it can also transform in an instant. Awe and anguish coexist.

    After being prescribed art through a social-health initiative to help heal my loneliness and grief, I experienced firsthand how creative expression and community connection can nurture recovery and resilience.

    Years later, when my creative work seemed lost and I’d begun doubting myself, strangers across the world rediscovered a song of mine, one that had vanished. For sixteen years, they’d been searching for it together, building a small community around something that connected them without knowing me or one another. These experiences remind me what the research confirms: awe, story, and artistry can bridge time, distance, and our human strengths.”

  • Through Ode to Wonder, Paula continues to help organizations and communities buffer burnout through creativity, transform loneliness into belonging, and reimagine workplaces as spaces of meaningful human connection and collective renewal.

    Her work affirms that well-being is both personal and collective — and that leadership begins when we remember what it means to be fully human, together.