Wendy Troxel Ph.D.

Wendy Troxel, Ph.D., is a Senior Behavioral Scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan, RAND Corporation, and holds Adjunct Faculty positions at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Utah. She is internationally recognized as the leading authority on couples and sleep and author of Sharing the Covers: Every Couple’s Guide to Better Sleep. Dr. Troxel is a licensed clinical psychologist and certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist, with more than fifteen years of clinical and research experience in sleep medicine. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, private foundations, and corporations. Her research is regularly published in top-tier medical journals and she has written the seminal peer-reviewed, academic article on couples and sleep. She is Associate Editor for the highly respected research journals Sleep Health and Behavioral Sleep Medicine and serves on the National Institutes of Health Sleep Disorders Research Advisory Board.

In addition to her academic credentials, Dr. Troxel’s work has been widely covered by the media, and is a highly sought after public speaker. Arianna Huffington called her one of the 5 most influential people in sleep, saying “Wendy Troxel is on the front lines of the sleep revolution. Again and again, her research shows just how fundamentally sleep affects every aspect of our lives…” Her work has been featured on numerous national and international radio and television outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, ABC World News Tonight, CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, and the BBC, and she is a regular contributor to HuffPost and Thrive Global. Her TEDx talk on the impact of school start times on adolescent sleep has received over 2 million views and is at the forefront of conversations nationally and internationally, for schools considering later start times.

More recently, Dr. Troxel gave a TEDx talk entitled “How to Sleep Like Your Relationship Depends on it” which is the subject of her book to be released in April 2021. As quoted in a March 2019 New York Times article, Troxel recommends, “Prioritize sleep as a couple. Think of it as an investment in your relationship, because you really are a better partner as well as more productive and healthier and happier when you sleep better.”