Nine Questions with Eric Oliver

As Professor of Practice at Columbia Business School and Founder of the Mentora Institute, Hitendra has coached dozens of Fortune 100 C-suite executives and taught 10,000+ MBAs and Executives. His class on Personal Leadership & Success is one of the most popular at Columbia Business School, for which he has won the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence.Hitendra’s mission is to discover, codify and teach the laws of success in life and leadership. His research integrates the latest science of human nature, ancient wisdom, studies of great leaders, and the personal journeys of everyday heroes. Hitendra brings a mathematician’s rigor and a truth-seeker’s spirit to some of today’s most vexing questions about authenticity, success, leadership, human potential, and more.Hitendra’s research and teaching on personal leadership have been covered by Inc., Forbes, Fortune, CNN, Psychology Today, BBC World Service, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. His podcast, Intersections, features acclaimed thought leaders and practitioners in the fields of human potential and leadership.Hitendra is the founder of Mentora Institute, which is at the forefront of creating a new model of leadership for the 21st-century that is agile, authentic, and attainable, where executives achieve ever-growing Outer Impact through ever-deepening Inner Mastery. Through its digital learning platform, Mentora has created a pocket “flight simulator” for leadership that helps learners gain mastery in a wide range of leadership skills through MicroPracticeTM. Hitendra’s clients include Accenture, SAP, Pfizer, Tata Group, Ericsson, GE, Kraft Heinz, Siemens, a Big-4 Accounting Firm, and Morgan Stanley. In the past, Hitendra was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company and the CEO/founder of a Silicon Valley start-up, Paramark, which was twice recognized as a Top-100 Internet technology company by Technologic Partners/Venture Wire. Hitendra has an MBA and Ph.D. in Management Science from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Support the show

Laurie Anderson is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting, Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery. She became more widely known outside the art world when her single "O Superman" reached number two on the UK singles chart in 1981. Her debut album Big Science was released the following year. She also starred in and directed the 1986 concert film Home of the Brave.Anderson is a pioneer in electronic music and has invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows. In 1977, she created a tape-bow violin that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow instead of horsehair and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she collaborated with Interval Research to develop an instrument she called a "talking stick," a six-foot (1.8 m) long baton-like MIDI controller that can access and replicate sounds.Support the show

Andrew Solomon, PhD is a writer and lecturer on politics, culture and psychology; winner of the National Book Award; and an activist in LGBTQ rights, mental health, and the arts. He is Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University Medical Center, Lecturer in Psychiatry at Yale University, and a former President of PEN American Center. He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and other publications on a range of subjects, including depression, Soviet artists, the cultural rebirth of Afghanistan, Libyan politics, and Deaf politics.Solomon's book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression  won the 2001 National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize.  His other books include the Irony Tower and Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.  He divides between between New York City and Rhinebeck NY.Support the show

Amanda Stern is the author of The Long Haul and eleven books for children written under the pseudonyms AJ Stern and Fiona Rosenbloom. In 2003, she founded the legendary Happy Ending Music and Reading Series, which required creative artists to take risks on stage. The multi-disciplinary series became the gold standard for literary events; many of today’s series are (knowingly and unknowingly) based on Happy Ending’s model. It was produced at Joe’s Pub and later at Symphony Space. The series ended in 2018. Her most recent book is Little Panic, a memoir about growing up with an undiagnosed panic disorder in Etan Patz era Greenwich Village is out now from Grand Central Publishing. Amanda is a mental health advocate, speaker, and advisory board member for Bring Change to Mind. As a writer, she’s required to live in Brooklyn, which she does, with her daughter Busy, who also happens to be a dog.Support the show

Jennifer Freed PhD is the best selling author of Use Your Planets Wisely and a renowned psychological astrologer and social and emotional education trainer. She has spent over thirty years consulting clients and businesses world wide on psychological, spiritual, and educational topics. She has served as the clinical director of Pacifica Graduate Institute and is national consultant for EMDR (Post Traumatic Growth Therapies).​As a regular contributor to goop, Jennifer has written over 23 articles on wellness and Astrology, and Jennifer has penned ten books relating to personal growth. She has also been interviewed for her expertise by the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Vogue.​She is the monthly psychological astrologer for the Sex with emily Podcast, the #1 Sirius show on sexuality, and she is also a monthly columnist for the Montecito Journal.​In 1999, Jennifer and her partner Rendy Freedman created the non profit AHA!, which is dedicated to teens, families, and educators feeling safe, seen, and celebrated. AHA! has served over 35,000 children and families in Santa Barbara, and  Jennifer has trained educators throughout the country in the five pillars of social and emotional learning: self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.​Dr. Freed's passion is to awaken the potentials of each client and collective and to guide them to make lasting contributions to their communities.   Support the show

Nicholas Epley is the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science, and Director of the Center for Decision Research, at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He studies social cognition—how thinking people think about other thinking people—to understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other. He teaches an ethics and happiness course to MBA students called Designing a Good Life. His research has appeared in more than two dozen empirical journals, been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Wired, and National Public Radio, among many others, and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Templeton Foundation. He has been awarded the 2008 Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2011 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association, the 2015 Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality Science, and the 2018 Career Trajectory Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. Epley was named a “professor to watch” by the Financial Times, one of the “World’s Best 40 under 40 Business School Professors” by Poets and Quants, and one of the 100 Most Influential in Business Ethics in 2015 by Ethisphere. He is the author of Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want.Support the show

Mike Levine, known by his nickname Vino, is an American sports agent and executive known for being co-head of CAA Sports, the sports division of Creative Artists Agency (CAA). He has been ranked as one of the most influential people in sports by Worth and Sports Business Journal. Levine has been co-head of CAA Sports, a division of CAA which handles sports properties, athlete representation and licensing, since it was founded in 2007. Under Levine, CAA signed athletes from the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL, and began a foray into European football in 2008. Under Levine, CAA Sports negotiated high-profile deals with stadiums and arenas, and launched CAA ICON, an owner's representative and management consulting firm in 2017. Levine was ranked 10th in Worth's 50 Most Powerful People in Sports, and ranked on Sports Business Journal’s list of 50 Most Influential People in Sports Business every year from 2008 to 2019. He was named to the Sports Business Journal 40 Under 40 lists in 2006, 2007, and 2008. In 2008, he was inducted into the Sports Business Journal Hall of Fame.Support the show

Jackie is President of The Acho Group, a strategy and leadership consulting firm. Prior to founding The Acho Group in 2005, she was a Partner of McKinsey & Company. She has worked for technology, industrial, academic, nonprofit, and economic development clients on a variety of issues, with particular focus on growth and innovation, strategy, and leadership development for 25 years. Current work includes empathy-centered cultural transformation with the Cleveland Police. Jackie received her master’s degree and Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in chemistry with highest honors from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Jackie was named one of the “top 40 under 40” by Crain’s Cleveland Business Magazine and “one of the 500 most influential women in Northeast Ohio” by Northern Ohio Live magazine.Support the show

Jack Zimmerman holds a BA, MA and PhD from Yale University, Harvard University and the University of Southern California, respectively. He is the co-author of Flesh and Spirit: The Mystery of Intimate Relationship with his life partner, Jaquelyn McCandless, and co-author of The Way of Council with Gigi Coyle. Jack held several leadership roles at The Ojai Foundation over a period of 30 years, including President, and co-founded the Oakwood Secondary School in Los Angeles. Jack started Heartlight School in Los Angeles in 1979 where the use of Council in schools was initiated. The success of Council at Heartlight led to Council programs in other independent and public schools in California, and in other parts of the US, as well as abroad.Support the show

Jane Dowling is a Registered Nurse with over 30 years of experience, including working with pediatric and adult emergency care, post-trauma reconstructive surgery and as clinical coordinator for NIH/NIAID AIDS Clinical Trials Group at NYU Medical Center. It was in clinical, epidemiological and ethnographic research that she most closely worked with individuals at end-of-life. Jane became enlightened to the methods that people connected with each other and noted emerging interactive technology that facilitated those connections. Fueled by this curiosity, she attended and received her masters from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. She worked in the digital world as a User Experience Strategist for more than fifteen years. It is human interaction that gives technology meaning and Jane is interested in advocating for the human experience, not the machine experience. Jane believe that any service that starts with understanding people holistically from a place of empathy will result in solutions that reduce complexity and inspire connection with the experience.Support the show