Author, Psychiatrist, Coach, Brain Researcher, Musician, Provocateur/Poet
Dr. Srini Pillay is chief medical officer and co-founder of Reulay, an AI-driven digital therapeutics company that is developing strategies to enhance well-being and healthy longevity. He is a world-renowned keynote speaker, lecturer, author, consultant and Harvard trained psychiatrist. He is known for combining “head and heart” (figuratively and literally) in an approach to personal development and goal mastery that blends science, spirituality, and horns-grabbing joie de vivre to combat the stresses faced by ambitious and high-achieving people in academia, business, and life.
After graduating at the top of his class from medical school in South Africa, he received a Medical Research Council Scholarship to study the neurochemistry of panic. Thereafter, he completed his residency in psychiatry at McLean Hospital—Harvard’s largest freestanding psychiatric hospital—with the most accolades ever given to a single resident. Srini also completed fellowships in Psychopharmacology, Structural Brain Imaging and Functional Brain Imaging.
He formerly served as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Part-Time) at Harvard Medical School and was Director of the Outpatient Anxiety Disorders Program at McLean Hospital and was Director of the Panic Disorders Research Program in the Brain Imaging Center. There, he spent 17 years studying functional brain imaging. During this time, he maintained an active clinical practice, which he continues today.
Currently, Srini is a member of the by-invitation-only “Group for Advancement of Psychiatry”, an American professional organization of psychiatrists dedicated to shaping psychiatric thinking, public programs and clinical practice in mental health. The founding group was seeking a way in which American psychiatry could give more forceful leadership, both medically and socially, and as a member of the “Disasters and the World Committee”, Srini’s contributions include but are not limited to two chapters in a book called “Disaster Psychiatry”.
Srini is also in multiple collaborations on health-related projects. With Harvard Health, he is developing a model on mindset shifts for burnout. He is also in current collaborations with programmers from Google and MIT to develop technologies that reduce anxiety.
In addition to his work in psychiatry, Srini has also consulted regularly for the past 10 years to companies that invest in biotechnology to assess medications in various illnesses including cancer, heart disease, and stroke.
Srini has a talent for translating complex research findings in psychiatry for consumption by the general public—in print and through radio, television, and the web. He enlightens and inspires with equal measures of insight, humor, and deep human compassion.
He received the “Books for a Better Life” award for his book, Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear (Rodale, 2010). This award was conceived with the purpose of recognizing authors across a wide range of disciplines who have had significant influence on human development over the past 75 years. (Prior recipients include Brene Brown and Jill Bolte Taylor.)
With so many business leaders among his clients, Dr. Pillay also became a certified master executive coach. As an expert in brain-based leadership development and the CEO of NeuroBusiness Group, he has also written Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders (FT Press, 2011.)
Srini prepares and delivers top-rated leadership development courses and plenaries for clients such as: Novartis, Lockheed Martin, Willis Group, Prudential, Pfizer, Fortune 500 Food/Beverage Companies, and some of the largest Fortune 100 consulting firms. He has also trained leaders at The MITRE Corporation, The Department of Defense and The Institute for Law Enforcement with great acclaim. When the UN, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund seek to empower their leaders, they call Srini Pillay. He speaks and teaches throughout the US, Canada, London, Paris, Switzerland, India, Greece and Brazil. Being an internationally recognized expert in applied brain science and human behavior, he addresses both specialists and general audiences on these topics throughout the world. In 2016, Srini was invited by McKinsey & Company to join their new “Consortium for Adult Learning and Development” and also is one of the advisors on a new “think tank” exploring the benefits of mindfulness in business. Srini teaches in Executive Education at Harvard Business School and Duke Corporate Education.
He has been an expert guest for CNN, Fox, NPR, The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Harvard Business School, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider and many other news outlets in a variety of media and is known as a highly entertaining guest.
His upcoming book, Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try: Unlock the Power of an Unfocused Mind explains how you can harness your mind’s innate tendency to wander, stall, rest, and unfocus and become more productive—in the boardroom, living room, or classroom. It will be published by Random House (Ballantine) in 2017.
With “renaissance man” bona fides, Srini is an unabashed “dabbler,” a polymath, an accomplished musician, award-winning poet and gourmand who frequently exports insights from neuroscience to other art forms—such as a new program that will combine neuroscience and music for use in corporate development.
“Just Do It,” simply won’t work post pandemic with stress levels at epidemic proportions. Today, delivering an organizational goal requires new methods with proven psychological heft and departure from the status quo. Stress and mental roadblocks undermine initiatives because they’re typically fiercer and more persistent than tangible ones. Leaders and teams can have vastly different beliefs about what’s possible to achieve.
How then, do leaders inspire teams to…
Exceed sales quotas?
Create a “never been done before,” product
Implement a strategic initiative … in spite of elevated stress, varying beliefs and mental roadblocks?
Imagine if … there was a way to boost a sense of what’s possible, and a way to transform mental roadblocks to achieve any goal … no matter what. The shift in focus, time and energy goes from obstacles to the objective. Imagine if… there was a neuroscience toolkit that leaders and teams could apply to increase a goal’s viability and success?
There is. It’s called Possibility Thinking, because research validates, for every initiative, mindset matters. Possibility thinking primes the mindset ahead of a goal using easy to learn and apply brain-based techniques. The Science of Possibility session, guides leaders to discover their sense of what’s possible, and what’s blocking it. There are several, but a significant factor that obstructs possibility thinking is prolonged stress, there’s no optimum performance in this state and it has serious physical health consequences.
This session gives leaders the practical tools to transform stress and underlying mental blockages. The return exceeds the investment with a measurable improvement in possibility thinking that nets tangible results. Instead of just envisioning an immediate goal or the distant future …. leaders now have the neuroscience understanding, skills and the tools … to build it.
“Grin and bear it,” isn’t an effective or sustainable resilience building strategy. Yet leaders face new challenges, sometimes with outmoded tools.
This Building Resilience program turns the topic upside down.
It changes the conversation.
To transform daunting challenges and build resilience that sticks, understanding the foundational complexities of the brain is a must. Otherwise it’s a contest between evolutionary factors that thwart every attempt at building resilience.
“Bad is stronger than good,” is one such factor. This famous piece of research, tells us, that our evolutionary hardwiring is to focus more attention on bad things which are easily retrievable in our memory.
But when we’re wired to focus on bad things, is building resilience even possible? Yes, it is.
You don’t need to be held hostage to evolution. The truth is, the brain can change, when you know how. In Building Resilience, this program introduces daring new approaches outside of the ordinary paradigms. It focuses on the neuroscience of resilience.
With supporting research and brain-based techniques, each participant learns the steps necessary to change the brain. It outlines the neurological conditions that promote clear thinking, a sense of calm amidst the storm, mindset necessary in astute decision making and a critical component of resilience. Leaders gain new perspectives on the brain and specific ways to leverage its power to apply to challenges within the organization for visible outcomes.
This neuroscience approach to resilience puts the practical tools into the hands of each leader. It gives them concrete new methods to face new challenges in the post pandemic era, during times of uncertainty and transition. No leader or team member should ever have to, “Grin and bear it,” … when they can possess the resilience to thrive.t.
Get ongoing guidance and support from world-renowned psychiatrist and brain researcher Dr. Srini Pillay to not just survive but thrive in complicated times.
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