Award-Winning Podcast Host & Global Authority on Human Behavior; Global Director of Behavioral Economics, Google
Maya Shankar: Biography at a Glance
- Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and global authority on human behavior and change, currently serving as Google’s Global Director of Behavioral Economics.
- She previously served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Obama White House and as the first Behavioral Science Advisor to the United Nations.
- She created and hosts A Slight Change of Plans, Apple’s “Best Show of the Year,” blending science and storytelling to help millions navigate life’s biggest transitions. The podcast features deeply personal stories and scientific insights about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change featuring guests like Hillary Clinton, Tiffany Haddish, and Kacey Musgraves.
- A Rhodes Scholar, Maya earned her B.A. from Yale, Ph.D. from Oxford, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at Stanford.
- Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, NPR, CBS Mornings, The Today Show, and National Geographic’s Limitless with Chris Hemsworth.
- She is the author of The Other Side of Change, which combines compelling human stories with scientific insight to reveal how we can find meaning in disruption.
- A former Juilliard violinist trained by Itzhak Perlman, Maya draws on her own life-altering injury to connect with audiences facing unexpected change.
Videos
Biography
Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who currently serves as Google’s Global Director of Behavioral Economics. She is well known as the creator of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans, previously named “Best Show of the Year” by Apple. She served as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and chaired the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. She was also appointed as the first Behavioral Science Advisor to the United Nations. Maya has a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at Stanford. She has been profiled by The New Yorker, has been a guest on NPR, CBS Mornings, and The Today Show, and was featured as a neuroscience expert on National Geographic’s Limitless with Chris Hemsworth. She is a former violin student of Itzhak Perlman at Juilliard.
Topics
The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans
In this powerful and deeply human talk, cognitive scientist Maya Shankar shares transformative insights from her book The Other Side of Change, blending cutting-edge behavioral science with moving personal stories. Drawing from her own life-altering experiences and interviews with individuals who’ve faced profound upheaval, Maya explores how we can rethink our relationship with change—not as something to survive, but as a profound opportunity for reinvention and growth. With warmth and clarity, she offers practical strategies for navigating disruption, helping audiences unlock resilience, tap into new potential, and embrace change as a catalyst for becoming their most authentic selves.
A Slight Change of Plans: The Science of Harnessing Disruption
There are few things in life that are as complex and messy—and potentially magical—as change. Once a concert violinist studying under Itzhak Perlman and the Juilliard School of Music, a career-ending injury instantly closed the doors that Maya had worked for years to open.
Inspired by her own experience, Dr. Shankar went on to study the science of change – ultimately leading Behavioral Science teams at the White House and Google. Now host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, Maya explores how the world’s luminaries navigate change in their own lives.
Audiences will learn how to skillfully embrace inflection points in their own lives, as Dr. Shankar reveals behavioral insights that can lead to powerful transformation.
From the White House to Google: How to Improve Decision-Making at Scale
When it comes to taking care of our health, finances, or emotions, we often make decisions and behave in ways that run counter to what intuition would suggest. Looking closely at what underlies these types of behaviors, Dr. Shankar shares knowledge of how even small changes in the way we design programs, products, and policies can motivate better choices, improve individual wellness, and impact other fundamental measures of happiness and health.
