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Philip Zimbardo, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Stanford University
Philip Zimbardo was born in 1933 and grew up in the South Bronx ghetto of New York City in a poor, uneducated Sicilian-American family. From this experience he learned that people, not material possessions, are our most valuable resource, that diversity should be embraced because it enriches us, and that education is the key to escaping poverty. His education began in New York Public School 52 and later included Monroe High School (with classmate Stanley Milgram), Brooklyn College (published his first research article on race relations), and Yale University for his Ph.D. (in 1959). Dr. Zimbardo has been on the faculty at Yale, New York University, Columbia University, and Stanford University, where he has been a professor since 1968. Among his honorary degrees are those from Greece’s Aristotle University, Peru’s San Martin University, and the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (in clinical psychology). For more than 40 years, Dr. Zimbardo has devoted his career to teaching, scientific research, the practice of psychology, and applying psychological knowledge to improve the human condition. Dr. Zimbardo has authored more than 250 articles, chapters, and books on topics that range from exploratory behavior in rats to persuasion, dissonance, hypnosis, cults, shyness, time perspective, deindividuation, prisons, and madness. His Stanford Prison Experiment is considered a classic demonstration of the power of situations to shape human behavior. At the APA convention in the August, 2000, he received the APA Division 1 Hilgard Award for his lifetime contributions to theory and research in general psychology.
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Laura Roberts, MD
Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University
Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford UniversityAuthor/editor of 7 books and monographs and more than 225 articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, Dr. Roberts is a nationally recognized scholar and leader in ethics, psychiatry, and medical education. Since 2003 she has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Academic Psychiatry—a journal focused on innovative education, mentorship, and leadership in academic psychiatry.
Dr. Roberts has performed numerous empirical studies of contemporary ethics issues in medicine, science, and health policy, including research on informed consent, ethical considerations in genetic inquiry, health care and clinical investigation involving members of vulnerable populations, death and dying, professionalism education, and related topics. Dr. Roberts’ research has been funded through competitive grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy as well as the National Alliance of Schizophrenia and Depression, the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, and other private foundations.
Dr. Roberts has been elected or appointed to several prominent leadership roles nationally, including president of the Association for Academic Psychiatry and president of the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatry. In 2008 she received the University of Toronto Centennial Award for Leading International Psychiatric Educator, and in 2010 she was given the Association for Academic Psychiatry Lifetime Achievement Award. With colleagues, she has recently written or edited several books, including Concise Guide to Ethics in Mental Health Care, Professionalism and Ethics: Q & A Self-Study Guide, Handbook of Career Development in Academic Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The Book of Ethics: Expert Guidance for Professionals Who Treat Addiction and Clinical Psychiatry Essentials. She is presently working on International Handbook of Psychiatry: A Concise Guide for Medical Students, Residents, and Medical Practitioners.
Dr. Roberts joined the faculty of Stanford in September 2010. She previously was the Chairman and Charles E. Kubly Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Professor and Vice Chair for Administration in the Department of Psychiatry, the Jack and Donna Rust Professor of Biomedical Ethics, and the Founder and Director of the Institute of Ethics at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Roberts performed her undergraduate, graduate, and fellowship training at the University of Chicago and her residency training at the University of New Mexico.
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Brian A. Wandell, PhD
Chairman, Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Professor of Psychology and Electrical Engineering, Stanford UniversityBrian A. Wandell is the first Isaac and Madeline Stein Family Professor. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1979 where he is Chair of Psychology and a member, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering and Radiology. His research projects center on how we see, spanning topics from visual disorders, reading development in children, to digital imaging devices and algorithms.
He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1973 with a B.S. in mathematics and psychology. In 1977, he earned a Ph.D. in social science from the University of California at Irvine. After a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1979. Professor Wandell was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1984 and became a full professor in 1988. In 1986, Dr. Wandell won the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences for his work in color vision. He was made a fellow of the Optical Society of America in 1990; in 1997 he became a McKnight Senior Investigator and received the Edridge Green Medal in Ophthalmology for work in visual neuroscience. In 2000, he was awarded the Macbeth Prize from the Inter-Society Color Council, and in 2007 he was named Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year by the SPIE/IS&T, and he was awarded the Tillyer Prize from the Optical Society of America in 2008. Wandell was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2003.
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Gary K. Steinberg, MD, PhD
Director, Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences
Chairman, Department of Neurosurgery, Stanford University
Professor of Neurosurgery and the Neurosciences, Stanford UniversityDr. Steinberg graduated summa cum laude with Honors in Biology from Yale University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was accepted into the Medical Scientist Training Program at Stanford University School of Medicine receiving his medical and doctoral degrees in neuroscience in 1980. He completed his surgical internship and residency in Neurological Surgery at Stanford. In 1987, Dr. Steinberg joined the faculty at Stanford as an Assistant Professor in Neurosurgery, being promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1993 and Professor in 1997. He was instrumental in forming the Stanford Stroke Center in 1991 and is currently the Co-Director. He was appointed Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford in 1995 and holds the Bernard and Ronni Lacroute-William Randolph Hearst Endowed Chair of Neurosurgery and the Neurosciences. Dr. Steinberg has also been a member of the Executive Committee of the Neuroscience Institute and of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford since their inceptions. He is currently the director for the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences.
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Brian Knutson, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Stanford University
Brian Knutson is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford University, and a CHP/PCOR associate. His research focuses on the neural basis of emotional experience and expression. He investigates this topic with a number of methods including self-report, measurement of nonverbal behavior, comparative ethology, psychopharmacology, and functional brain imaging. His long-term goal is to understand the neurochemical and neuroanatomical mechanisms responsible for emotional experience and to explore the implications of these findings for the assessment and treatment of clinical disorders of affect and addiction, as well as economic behavior.
Knutson has received Young Investigator Awards from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Association for Behavioral Medicine Research, the American Psychiatric Association, and the New York Academy of Science. He received BA degrees in experimental psychology and comparative religion from Trinity University, a PhD in experimental psychology from Stanford, and has conducted postdoctoral research in affective neuroscience at UC-San Francisco and at the National Institutes of Health.
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James R. Doty, MD
Director and Founder, CCARE
Adjunct Professor of Neurosurgery, Stanford UniversityJames R. Doty, MD has been on the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine since 1997 in the Neurosurgery Department as a professor and more recently as an adjunct professor. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford, of which His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the founding benefactor. Most recently, his academic focus is on meditation, compassion, and self-compassion for which he has lectured throughout the world.
Dr. Doty attended U.C. Irvine as an undergraduate, received his medical degree from Tulane University and completed neurosurgery residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Dr. Doty served 9 years on active duty in the U.S Army attaining the rank of major. He completed fellowships in pediatric neurosurgery and electroneurophysiology.
He is an inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He holds multiple patents and is the former CEO of Accuray (ARAY:NASDAQ). Dr. Doty has given support to a number of charitable organizations supporting peace initiatives and providing healthcare throughout the world. Additionally, he has supported research, provided scholarships and endowed chairs at multiple universities.
He is a consultant to medical device companies and is an operating partner and advisor to venture capital firms. Dr. Doty serves on the Board of a number of non-profits and is the vice-chair of the Charter for Compassion International and the former chair of the Dalai Lama Foundation. He is on the Senior Advisory Board of the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Dr. Doty serves on the Board of Governors of Tulane University School of Medicine and the President’s Council at Tulane University.
He is the New York Times bestselling author of Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discovery the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart now translated into 40 languages. Dr. Doty is also the senior editor of the Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science.
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Robert Cusick
Director of Compassion Education
Robert Cusick is the Director of Compassion Education at CCARE Stanford University and a Co-Founder of the Applied Compassion Training (ACT) that was formerly offered at CCARE Stanford from 2020-2023. He is a Stanford Lecturer and Sr. Certified CCARE instructor and teaches at Stanford University, UCSF, Kaiser Permanente Medical Centers, and in multiple other venues.
As a long-time meditator and former monastic, Robert ordained in Myanmar (Burma) under the renowned meditation master, Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw, and studied with him from 2003 – 2012. He has studied in numerous contemplative traditions including Soto Zen while in residence at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, in the Ridhwan School’s Diamond approach with A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), and for 27 years in the Insight Meditation tradition with Gil Fronsdal, PhD and a host of others. He provides grief counseling and bereavement support for adults and children at Kara in Palo Alto, where he co-leads men’s grief groups and facilitates retreats for fathers grieving the death of a child.
Robert sits on the Board of Directors of the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies.
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James Ehrlich
Director of Compassionate Sustainability, CCARE
James Ehrlich is an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University School of Medicine. Additionally, James is appointed Faculty at Singularity University, Senior Fellow at NASA Ames Research Center, and a White House / OSTP Appointee to a joint taskforce on Regenerative Infrastructure.
Mr. Ehrlich is also the Founder of ReGen Villages Holding, B.V., a Stanford University spin-off formed in the EU as a Dutch impact-for-profit company, using machine learning software to address the U.N. 17 Sustainable Development Goals, specifically to provide solutions for affordable housing, climate change adaptability, and regenerative resiliency.
Mr. Ehrlich founded ReGen Villages in 2016, with its patent-pending VillageOS™ operating system software to design and operate bio-regenerative and resilient (self-reliant) neighborhood infrastructure and retrofits, integrating clean water, renewable energy micro-grids, high-yield organic food, and circular nutritional flows at the neighborhood scale, to promote healthy long-term outcomes for residents and flourishing communities.
A serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for over 25-years, James successfully founded and managed technology and media companies with successful exits. For nearly a decade, Mr. Ehrlich executive produced an award-winning national public broadcasting series based on his case study research of organic and bio-dynamic family farms, that at its apex reached over 35-million homes each week and is also the co-author of a best-selling companion book on Hachette, Organic Living THG (2007).
James holds a Bachelor of Science from New York University and Master studies in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. He has won several awards for sustainable design and is a researcher and global lecturer on the topic of regenerative neighborhood development. He has co-authored two (2) U.N. Sustainable Development Goal Platform Briefs (2015/2018) with Prof. Larry Leifer and Chris Ford (AIA) from the Center for Design Research at Stanford University.
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Neelama Eyres
Director of Program Development, CCARE
Neelama Eyres is the Director of Program Development at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University. She is the Co-Founder of the Applied Compassion Training (ACT) that was formerly offered at CCARE Stanford from 2020-2023.
For the past 25 years, Neelama has developed and facilitated experiential programs for individuals, groups, and leaders worldwide. She’s trained participants to enact and apply compassion within their organizations, institutions, and communities around the globe. She is the co-author of a personal memoir which details her journey through a Compassionate Divorce.
Throughout her career, Neelama has provided training, consulting, and executive coaching for organizations including Google, Slack, MetLife, the Alzheimer’s Association, and many more. In addition, she has trained and developed facilitators within corporations, non-profits, and healthcare organizations.
She is also Co-Founder and Lead Facilitator for The Inner Journey Institute, an educational organization that has offered transformational programs across the United States, Canada, and Europe since 1999. For IJI, she has designed and facilitated highly immersive workshops and facilitator trainings geared towards helping participants embody higher levels of compassion, mindfulness, forgiveness, and personal transformation for themselves, their organizations, and their communities.
Neelama’s mastery is creating interactive, immersive, and experiential learning environments that allow participants to have a direct and embodied experience of spirituality and compassion. Neelama’s contemplative practice combined with her extensive travels throughout Southeast Asia and India have given her an extraordinary depth of spiritual experience and knowledge of Eastern traditions which, like her studies of Western spirituality, is reflected in all her work.
To learn more about Neelama visit her website.
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Daniel Martin, PhD
Director of Corporate Compassion Education, CCARE
Dr. Daniel E. Martin is an Associate Professor of Management at California State University, East Bay, and Director of Corporate Compassion Education at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University. Formerly a Visiting Associate Professor at CCARE, a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law & Society at UC Berkeley, Director of Research at the Charter for Compassion a Research Fellow for the U.S. Army Research Institute as well as a Personnel Research Psychologist for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, he has worked with private, public and non-profit organizations on pre-employment selection, training, and organizational assessment. He has held international appointments at Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, Villahermosa, Mexico and The D’Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio De Janiero, Brazil.
Dan holds a Ph.D. in Social and Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Howard University, Washington, D.C., and a BS in Clinical Psychology from San Francisco State, California.
Dan’s research interests include: compassion, social capital, ethical behavior, racism and prejudice, human resources assessment, religiosity, spirituality and humor. Dan has held TEDxHayward at CSUEB highlighting quantitative efforts in Peace Innovation twice.
Dan is published in a range of journals including Journal of Business Ethics, Personnel Review, Human Organization, Ethics and Behavior, and the Journal of Applied Psychology. His current research streams investigate the impact of individual differences and ideology on social corporate responsibility and human resources decision making. Other streams involve the impact of ideology on compassion and psychological well-being. His current applied work on the use of untapped social capital to ameliorate social problems serve as a research, skills development and assessment platform. Dan is also the founder and CEO of Arete Science, LLC, which scales interventions and measurable impact in competence and well-being across a wide array of social and individual needs (Business, Leadership, Psychedelics, SUD and more).
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Jennifer Nadel
Director of Compassionate Politics, CCARE
Jennifer Nadel is a pioneer in the emerging field of compassionate politics, working to bring the science and practice of compassion into the political arena. She speaks globally about the transformative power of compassion and provides training to those working in the political arena including at the UN and the UK Houses of Parliament.
She founded the think tank, Compassion in Politics, together with Matt Hawkins in 2018. It works on a cross-party basis with 100+ politicians in the UK to improve political processes and outcomes and their advice is sought internationally. Their original research is cited in parliament, influences policy, and has led to new legislation being debated. In 2022 she helped establish the Global Compassion Coalition which now has a global reach of millions.
Jennifer advises and trains grassroots and national campaigns, has run for the UK Parliament, and served on the National Executive Committee of the Green Party. In 2018 she stepped away from party politics to focus on building common ground.
Her Sunday Times Bestseller, WE: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere, co-authored with Gillian Anderson, is a guide to inner and outer change and a rallying cry to move to a less me-centric society. It was featured on shows including CBS This Morning, The View, Dr Oz, the BBC and ITV. Jennifer continues to provide training based on it.
Her most recent book, How Compassion can Transform our Politics, Economy and Society, co-edited with Matt Hawkins, has been hailed as a guide to creating a more compassionate world.
Jennifer is a qualified barrister and award-winning journalist who has broadcast for the BBC. and ITV, from around the world. A regular media commentator, Jennifer speaks internationally at organisations including: Google, Apple, Bloomberg, AOL Build, JP Morgan, the Oxford Union, and at leading universities. American born, she’s currently based in London.
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Emma Seppala, PhD
Science Director, CCARE
Emma Seppala, PhD is Science Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University. Her areas of research include positive organizational psychology, health psychology, and cultural psychology. In particular her research has focused on well-being, compassion, social connection and mind-body practices.
She is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, and Scientific American Mind. She also consults with Fortune 500 leaders and employees on building a positive organization and is the author of an upcoming book on the science of success, The Happiness Track, published by HarperOne (January 2016). She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Fulfillment Daily, a news site dedicated to the science of happiness.
Dr. Seppala’s research has been cited in numerous television and news outlets including ABC News and The New York Times and she is quoted in books such as Congressman Tim Ryan’s Mindful Nation . Her research on mind-body practices for military veterans with trauma was highlighted in a documentary called Free the Mind by award-winning filmmaker Phie Ambo. She is the recipient of a number of research grants and service awards including the James W. Lyons Award from Stanford University, where she helped found Stanford’s first academic class on the psychology of happiness and taught many well-being programs for Stanford students.
Dr. Seppala received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University, a Master’s Degree in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University, and a PhD in Psychology from Stanford University. She completed her postdoctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Dr. Richard Davidson. Originally from Paris, France, she speaks five languages: French, English, German, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. Outside of her experiences in the US, she has worked in France and China.
For more, see her website.
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Kunal Sood
Director of Compassionate Social Impact, CCARE
Kunal Sood is a world-renowned impact entrepreneur, family business executive, and award-winning disruptive innovator. Kunal is currently at Sudtrac Linkages where he serves to take the family-owned company to the next level while pursuing his passion for leveraging exponential tech and leadership to transform our world for a better future at X Impact Ventures.
He is the founder of We The Planet and also serves as Chief Impact Officer at the Chopra Foundation. From serving in the slums of Mumbai with Harvard to building global movements at the United Nations in New York with world leaders, global citizens, and iconic artists, Sood is on a mission to make the impossible possible.
Forbes spotlighted him as a global movement builder given his extraordinary work as the founding curator for TEDx at the United Nations. He is a TED Resident, an Innovation Fellow at Columbia University, and an Executive Fellow at the Indian School of Business. Sood serves as a Global Ambassador for the Non-Violence Project, Singularity University, and OpenEXO. Sood has a lifelong love for learning having earned several master’s degrees that include an M.B.A., from Kellogg at Northwestern University and an M.A.P.P./M.Phil., from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Monica Worline, PhD
Research Scientist, CCARE
Organizational Psychologist and Founder and CEO of EnlivenWorkMonica Worline, PhD is an organizational psychologist and founder and CEO of EnlivenWork, an innovation organization that teaches businesses and others how to tap into courageous thinking, compassionate leadership, and the curiosity to bring their best work to life. Monica is an award-winning teacher and an interdisciplinary scholar who has served on the faculty of Goizueta Business School at Emory University and on the faculties of the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California Irvine and the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology.
Monica’s writing has been featured in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Chicago Tribune, and BizEd Magazine and her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Science. She authored the book Awakening Compassion at Work and is a founding member of the CompassionLab, the world’s leading research collaboratory focused on compassion at work.
Monica completed her doctoral work in organizational psychology at the University of Michigan and is a member of the Positive Organizational Scholarship community housed in the Ross School of Business. She earned her BA with distinction and honors at Stanford University, where her emphasis on humanities continues to provide a strong foundation for her unique blend of critical thinking and creativity.
History
CCARE was envisioned by Dr. James Doty, a Stanford neurosurgeon, entrepreneur and philanthropist, and current CCARE Director. Dr. Doty has a longstanding interest in the fundamental motivations of individuals to do good. He originated the concept of a rigorous multi-disciplinary scientific effort at Stanford directed at understanding the neural, mental, and social bases of compassion and altruism, and he provided the initial funding for the endeavor.
This interest was further spurred by the historic visit by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Stanford University in October of 2005, a visit hosted by the Stanford School of Medicine, through the leadership of Dean Philip A. Pizzo, and the Stanford Office of Religious Life, headed by Rev. Scotty McLennan. A high point of this visit was a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Stanford scientists from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and medicine. This dialogue, moderated by Dr. William Mobley, former Professor of Neurology and former Director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, had the important consequence of recognizing that a deep engagement between science, especially in the cognitive science disciplines of neuroscience and psychology, and Buddhism and other contemplative traditions could make significant contribution towards a deeper understanding of many important aspects of the human mind and emotion.
Recognizing the historic nature of the initial dialogue held at Stanford between scientists and the Dalai Lama, Dr. Doty organized an informal group of individuals with similar interests to further explore these areas. Subsequently, he provided the funding for Dr. Thupten Jinpa, a noted contemplative scholar and translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to come to Stanford as a Visiting Scholar and join Project Compassion as the principal contemplative scholar. As the group expanded, it became evident that there was serious interest in formalizing what was informally called “Project Compassion.”
With the encouragement of Dr. Mobley and Dr. Gary Steinberg, Chairman of Neurosurgery and Director of the Stanford Institute of Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences, Dean Pizzo created The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford (CCARE). Thus, CCARE came into being with Dr. Doty as Director, Dr. Mobley (who has since left Stanford to work as Chair of Neuroscience at UCSD) as Co-Director, and Mr. Tenzin Tethong (Distinguished Scholar, Tibetan Studies Initiative at Stanford) and Dr. Steinberg serving as members of the founding Executive Committee.
Courses
Learn to develop the qualities of compassion, empathy and kindness for oneself and for others lorem
Videos
Research
In addition to original research, CCARE promotes research on compassion through small grants, postdoctoral fellowships, conferences on compassion, and a science of compassion summer research institute.
Current compassion research projects funded by and in collaboration with CCARE
Help us create a comprehensive dictionary of compassion-related terms.
The use of animals in scientific research has been at the core of advancement in medicine and neuroscience over centuries. The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) is a secular multidisciplinary university based scientific research center and is not part of or affiliated with any religious or cultural entity or organization that bans the use of human or animal subjects in research.
Press
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The Quiet Power that Elevates People and Organizations – an Interview with Monica Worline, Ph.D.
Written by Skip Prichard. Someone once told me that if you treat everyone as if they are suffering in some way, you will be right most of the time. Throughout my life, I’ve remembered the wisdom in this advice. Some leaders have told me that work is a …
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What Some Research on Creativity Tells Us
Written by Sharon Kilarski. If anyone doubts that our culture is obsessed with creativity, a quick survey of the available literature on the topic should satisfy. The amount of scholarly interest on creativity in the last 50 years at least is mind-bogg …
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Our Need to Feel Special is Making Us Lonely
Written by Emma Seppala. About a month ago, a group of about 20 men—all fathers in their 30s and 40s—gathered at a home in Oakland, California to talk fatherhood. Alarmingly, when asked how many of them had “real friends”—the kind of confidantes with w …
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Can You Really be Yourself at Work?
Written by Katie Hope. When you’re at work, do you behave in the same way as you do when you’re at home? Or do you have a work persona – a duller, more subdued version of your real self? Of course there are certain behaviours, such as swearing, or nudi …
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5 Easy Ways to Use Self-Compassion to Get Through Hard Times
Written by Julia Hogan. When you’re having a difficult time, rather than berating yourself, try self-compassion. As a therapist, I’ve heard so many of my patients say they don’t deserve the same level of compassion that they give their friends. “Of cou …
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How Compassion Relieves Chronic Pain
Written by Emma Seppala. If you suffer from chronic pain, and perhaps the angry emotions that hurting all the time can lead to, there’s a drug-free treatment that takes only 15 minutes a day and can bring real relief. It’s called compassion meditation. …
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The Amazing Health Benefits of Being Nice
Written by Kristen Domonell. With so much suffering in the world, it’s easy to feel helpless. But small acts of generosity can literally change lives, which is why “random acts of kindness” — or doing something nice for someone just because you can — n …
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In a Difficult Conversation, Listen More Than You Talk
Written by Emma Seppala and Jennifer Stevenson. When Jared walked into a meeting to discuss a new marketing approach for a product, the conversation didn’t play out well. Five minutes into the dialogue, the product manager, Françoise, started interrupt …
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The Boy in the Magic Shop
Written by Immanual Joseph. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. James Doty who is the founder and the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at the Stanford University School of Medicine of which t …
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15 Five-Second Strategies for Shutting Down Stress ASAP
Written by Tina Donvito. Dealing with sudden stress—a phone call with bad news, a last-minute assignment from your boss, or an argument with your spouse—triggers a cascade of physical and mental symptoms that can be hard to stop. The first thing to do? …
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Embracing Hardship: A Surprising Secret to Happiness
Written by Emma Seppala. Research shows that we have more positive experiences than negative ones, yet research also shows that our brain tends to focus on the negative aspects of our lives. We take the good things for granted and blow up the problems. …
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When Giving Critical Feedback, Focus on Your Nonverbal Cues
Written by Emma Seppala. Giving feedback may be one of the most difficult challenges a manager faces. On the one hand, you have to be honest; on the other hand, you don’t want to alienate your employee. You tread a fine line between maintaining cordial …
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Between Stimulus and Response with Dr. James Doty
Dr. James Doty was interviewed by John Malkin with Heartfulness Magazine about aspects of human behavior that relate to compassion and collective social issues. To read the full article, click here.
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The Importance of Teaching Kids to Be Kind to Pets
Written by Janice Neumann. The Kuerner brothers, John, 4, and Will, 6, had fun last summer gathering branches and leaves for bird nests, touching real bird feathers and gathering nuts and berries for wildlife — all as part of a Backyard Buddies program …
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The Ancient Practice Solving the City’s Oldest Problems
Written by Lucy Burton. The answer to some of the City’s most persistent HR problems might not be as complicated as blind recruitment schemes or work-life balance initiatives, but in a practice founded more than two and a half thousand years ago. A gro …
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7 Things that Can Help When You’re Too Exhausted to Work Any More Today
Written by Shana Lebowitz. Humans are not machines. While your computer can generally run all day long without a problem, you can’t. Even people who love their jobs and feel super-motivated during the workday (we hope that’s you!) will at some point hi …
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What to Do When You’re the Target of a Hurtful Office Rumor
Written by Emma Seppala. When Caroline moved to a new city to take on a job at a company she was thrilled to join, she was surprised when she had a hard time building friendships and positive relationships with her colleagues. A few months down the roa …
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Stanford Neurosurgeon-Writer Encourages People to Practice Kindness and Compassion
Written by Margarita Gallardo. Jim Doty’s life might have turned out very differently had it not been for a chance meeting in a magic shop when he was 12 years old. It was there that the Stanford neurosurgeon met Ruth, who taught him how to harness the …
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How Living with an Open Heart Creates Hope
Written by Mila Atmos. When I read James Doty’s New York Times bestseller, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain, I was thoroughly enchanted. His story inspired me to believe that my future could be brighter …
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Living with Compassion Intention – Interview with Dr. James Doty
Written by Sarah Caplan. Last April, my meditation group attended an event at Stanford University entitled “Conversations on Compassion with Sharon Salzberg.” Sponsored by Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) and …
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Go Easy on Yourself
Written by Claire Sykes. There you go again, diving into another bag of potato chips. So you beat yourself up with harsh words. You’d never treat a friend this way! You know she feels better when you show her some love. Do that for yourself and you’ll …
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My Dirty Little Secret: For Once, Actually I’m Happy
Written by Abigail Libers. “So how are you?!” a friend asked me at brunch recently. I hadn’t seen her in a while and thought for a moment. “Great!” I replied. “Things have been going really well for me.” Even I was surprised by my response; it’s rare t …
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Iraq War Vet Uses Holistic Approach to Combat PTSD
Written by Avinash Ramsadeen. After serving in Iraq from 2004-2005 as an infantry soldier, Tom Voss decided to put the war behind him and get his life on track. He enrolled in school, got a civilian job and moved into his own place. However, about a ye …
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How Senior Executives Find Time to Be Creative
Written by Emma Seppala. The number-one attribute CEOs look for in their incoming workforce (according to an IBM survey of more than 1,500 CEOs across 33 industries and 60 countries) is not discipline, integrity, intelligence, or emotional intelligence …
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Reality Bites: Hyper-Connected Thanks to WhatsApp and Facebook, Yet Very Lonely?
Written by Poonacha Machaiah. A day could go by where you are connected with all your friends across the globe, but when you go to bed you experience a deep sense of isolation. We may be chatting with our family and friends and sharing intimate moments …
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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
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COMPASSION RESEARCH
Peer-Reviewed CCARE Articles
Bayley, P.J., Schulz-Heik, R.J., Tang, J.S., Mathersul, D.C., Avery, T., Wong, M., Zeitzer, J.M., Rosen, C.S., Burn, A.S., Hernandez, B., Lazzeroni, L – …
COMPASSION EDUCATION
Deepen your ability to share the science, philosophy and pedagogy of compassion.
Learn to develop the qualities of compassion, empathy and kindness for oneself and for others.
Stanford’s President, Dean of the School of Medicine and Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences emphasize the importance of compassion at Stanford and beyond.
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CCARE design course at Misk Schools in Saudi Arabia
James Ehrlich, Director of Compassionate Sustainability at Stanford CCARE, developed an innovative program with his colleague Alexandra Albinus and the ReGen U design team where middle and high school students at the world-renowned Misk Schools were introduced to the concept of Design Empathy. Starting last June and continuing until November…
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Compassion-Based Practices for Secondary Traumatic Stress: A Resource Guide for Helping Professionals
With deep appreciation, I wish to express my gratitude to Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) for its unwavering commitment to cultivating a more compassionate world and for the profound impact it has had on the lives of countless individuals, myself included. My training with…
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If you want to lead, compassion and mindfulness are the keys!
Mindfulness and Compassion Are Fundamental for Leadership My journey as a leader has been profoundly influenced by my applied compassion training through CCARE Stanford. Almost two decades of working with several organizations has made me understand that true change needs to be ‘inside-out’ and that it begins with each individual….
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Befriend: Inspiring a Lifestyle of Curiosity, Connection and Compassion
My ACT capstone project, entitled: Befriend, a global movement of connection through compassion, combined a theoretical and an experiential platform to explore the question, “Can a simple, compassionate connection be life-changing?” With the invaluable guidance and support of my ACT teachers, along with my colleagues and testimonials from people directly touched…
Pay it Forward Parties
When Paige McCarthy begin planning her annual dinner party for a small group of friends, she knew she wanted to create something unique, something with lasting impact. “I was really interested in how I could make something bigger out of the little that I have and create a good experience for everyone,” says McCarthy, a Portland, Ore., advertising executive.
Could she, McCarthy wondered, create an entire party around the notion of doing good deeds for others as payback for those received? That question sparked her to create a Pay It Forward Party, which, in the course of a few hours, transformed a small dinner party into a life-changing event for the guests and people throughout the community.
Preparing to give
The Pay It Forward philosophy was popularized in a book by Catherine Ryan Hyde in 2000, and in a subsequent movie. Yet, the idea has been around since the days of Ancient Greece when a play first talked of the concept of passing on kind acts. Benjamin Franklin wrote about it too, in a letter drafted in the late 1700s.
But, on that night in November 2010, McCarthy’s dinner guests knew little about what she had in store. After they arrived at her home, each of the four couples received $100 and partial instructions, plucked like leaves from a centerpiece cleverly designed as a giving tree. When combined with the instructions of the other guests, the group discovered that they were to use the money to help others.
To read the full article, click here.
Philip Zimbardo, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Stanford University
Philip Zimbardo was born in 1933 and grew up in the South Bronx ghetto of New York City in a poor, uneducated Sicilian-American family. From this experience he learned that people, not material possessions, are our most valuable resource, that diversity should be embraced because it enriches us, and that education is the key to escaping poverty. His education began in New York Public School 52 and later included Monroe High School (with classmate Stanley Milgram), Brooklyn College (published his first research article on race relations), and Yale University for his Ph.D. (in 1959). Dr. Zimbardo has been on the faculty at Yale, New York University, Columbia University, and Stanford University, where he has been a professor since 1968. Among his honorary degrees are those from Greece’s Aristotle University, Peru’s San Martin University, and the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (in clinical psychology). For more than 40 years, Dr. Zimbardo has devoted his career to teaching, scientific research, the practice of psychology, and applying psychological knowledge to improve the human condition. Dr. Zimbardo has authored more than 250 articles, chapters, and books on topics that range from exploratory behavior in rats to persuasion, dissonance, hypnosis, cults, shyness, time perspective, deindividuation, prisons, and madness. His Stanford Prison Experiment is considered a classic demonstration of the power of situations to shape human behavior. At the APA convention in the August, 2000, he received the APA Division 1 Hilgard Award for his lifetime contributions to theory and research in general psychology.