Aneel Chima

Bio

Aneel Chima, PhD, is director of the Division of Health and Human Performance at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Flourishing Project. His teaching and scholarship engages the question, "How can we innovate ways to scale individual and collective flourishing in an emerging future defined by exponential change and human-technology convergence?" His work applies insights from the emerging science and art wellbeing alongside the tools of design thinking and systems change to scale positive transformation. Aneel co-founded and co-chairs the Wellbeing, Innovation, and Social Change in Education (WISE) Network, a global movement of higher education social innovation programs at 100 universities, and co-convenes the Flourishing Academic Network (FAN), a consortium of centers and research institutes at top universities across the North America focused on reinventing higher education as a force for global thriving. His work has been published in the Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and other journals.

In the business sphere, Aneel spent over ten years as co-founder and managing partner of AT THE CORE, a consulting firm that enhanced the innovation and performance of leading global organizations by optimizing the emotional, social, and neurophysiological drivers of team and leadership performance. His approach harnesses powerful insights from the academic research sphere and applies them to solving tactical and strategic challenges confronting organizations in a complex, asymmetric world.

Aneel is passionate about using psychological insights to affect sustainable social change and prioritizes non-profit work. He is a long-time Buddhist contemplative practitioner and serves on the board of the Pristine Mind Foundation, devoted to preserving ancient wisdom in a contemporary context. Previously, he served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and a board member of Consciousness Hacking, a global community exploring technology as a catalyst for human connection and wellbeing. He was Chair of the Board for the Veteran, Immigrant, and Refugee Trauma Institute of Sacramento (VIRTIS), for which he won the Ulysses Medal from the UC Davis School of Medicine and where he helped oversee partnerships with the UC Global Health Initiative and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He also served on the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology Board of Trustees and the Association for Transpersonal Psychology Board of Directors. Before re-specializing in the field of psychology, he was an award-winning physics and mathematics educator at Everett Alvarez High School in Salinas, CA where the SUHS District Trustees recognized his teaching excellence.