Award-Winning Podcast Host & Global Director of Behavioral Economics, Google
Maya Shankar: Biography at a Glance
- Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and global authority on human behavior who currently serves as Google’s Global Director of Behavioral Economics.
- She is the Creator, Host, and Executive Producer of the Ambie Award-winning podcast A Slight Change of Plans, featuring 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.
- Her forthcoming book, The Other Side of Change, blends personal storytelling and scientific insight to offer a powerful exploration of the ways we can find meaning in the tumult of life’s most unexpected changes.
- A former Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, Shankar founded and led the White House’s Behavioral Science Team, bringing research-backed empathy and insight to public policy.
- She has been profiled by The New Yorker and featured in The New York Times, Scientific American, Forbes, and on NPR's All Things Considered, Freakonomics, and Hidden Brain for her work at the intersection of science and the human experience.
- A Juilliard-trained violinist and former student of Itzhak Perlman, she brings deep curiosity, emotional intelligence, and artistic sensibility to everything she does—from science to storytelling.
Videos
Biography
Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who currently serves as Google’s Global Director of Behavioral Economics. She is also the Creator, Executive Producer, and host of the Pushkin Show, A Slight Change of Plans, which was named Apple Podcasts' Best Show of the Year. In the show, Maya leads intimate conversations that give an unvarnished look into how people navigate changes and ultimately grow. She has uncovered little-known personal stories and reflections from familiar names like Hillary Clinton, Tiffany Haddish, and Kacey Musgraves.
Maya was previously a Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as Chair of the White House Behavioral Science Team — a team of scientists charged with improving public policy using research insights about human behavior. She also served as the first Behavioral Science Advisor to the United Nations under Ban Ki-moon, and as a core member of Pete Buttigieg’s debate preparation team during his 2020 presidential run. Maya has a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience from Stanford, a Ph.D. from Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a B.A. from Yale.
She has been profiled by The New Yorker and been the featured guest on NPR's All Things Considered, Freakonomics, and Hidden Brain. She's a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music's pre-college program, where she was a private violin student of Itzhak Perlman and performed alongside him at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall.
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.
