Micah Kessel: CEO of Empathable
This week in the China Shop, Micah Kessel, CEO of Empathable stops by for an interesting discussion on empathy and how it can affect the bottom line of corporations of any size. Micah also shows us how to spot companies with poor culture by looking into retention rates and explains how poor empathy disproportionately affects people who aren't part of the majority. We also discuss why typical trainings are ineffective and how Empathable is taking a different approach as it works with companies like Cisco, Meta and Altria.
2 Bulls in a China Shop: Recorded on 09/20/22
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About Micah:
For nearly two decades, Micah J. Wonjoon Kessel has designed empathic experiences applying research on the science of emotions. Pioneering behavioral design in the Netherlands, he advised on experiential concepts with organizations such as Google, Disney, Microsoft, and projects for flourishing across social divides with the Finnish and Swedish governments, and the Diabetes Fund.
Currently, Micah is Design Lead at Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s neuroscience lab, IASLab, at Northeastern Psychology, and at Dr. Mahzarin Banaji’s implicit bias research lab at Harvard Psychology.
He applies this research as Executive Director of Empathable, which has created a facilitated experience and an app that is changing the paradigm of how we learn through experience, resulting in increasing empathy while decreasing bias and polarization on an organizational and national scale.
Under Micah’s direction, Empathable’s team is a winner of the Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund Award in 2020, granted by their joint council of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. The Empathable Experience has been shared with over 100 organizations, including the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, at the Black in Design Conference, and multiple Fortune 50 companies. He has presented his work at Harvard Medical School, the Society for Neuroscience and Creativity, The Boston Museum of Science, Darden School of Business, and was a 2019 Byron fellow. Micah speaks English, German, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and some French and enjoys speaking and writing on the topic of experience and subjective realism.
Guest Links:
Empathable Website
Micah Kessel's Website
Social Links:
Follow Empathable on Twitter
Follow Empathable on Instagram
Follow Empathable on LinkedIn
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