Bio
Nina Vasan, MD, MBA'18, is a psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and pioneer in digital mental health innovation with lived experience of anxiety and depression. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford, where she is Founder and Executive Director of Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation. Brainstorm’s experts worked with Pinterest to design the “compassionate search” user experience, which provides treatments for anxiety, depression, and self-harm for Pinterest's 450 million users and has been distributed to 23 countries. Within just 6 months, this effort led to an 88% reduction in self-harm content. This work was named by Fast Company as the “Most Innovative Wellness Projects” and “Best Designs for Social Good.” They also created The New York Times-featured “Stanford Social Media Safety Plan,” a practical and collaborative method for users of all ages to develop healthier social media behaviors. Having spent over a decade addressing social media's positive and negative impact on mental health, they are now applying the lessons learned to make Generative AI safer and healthier for all users.
She has been an active leader in the American Psychiatric Association, where she was Chair of the APA Committee on Innovation, leading the organization’s national innovation agenda, Co-Head of the new Caucus on Psychiatric Leadership and Entrepreneurship, and Founder of the APA Psychiatry Innovation Lab, an annual digital health incubator program that has nurtured 60+ seed and early-stage technology companies. Her policy experience includes serving on the Health Policy Advisory Committee for both the Obama 2008 and Biden 2020 Presidential campaigns, being an expert advisor for the United Nations on inclusive social policies for mental health, and working in the Office of Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan at the World Health Organization. Her business experience includes serving as the Chief Medical Officer of the mental health startup Real (now Zeera), management consulting at McKinsey & Company in Silicon Valley, advising healthcare payers and providers, and being an entrepreneur-in-residence at the venture capital firm Venrock. She co-authored the #1 Amazon Best Selling book "Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action, and Social Innovation", praised by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus as "the primer for social innovation", and published in the US and China. She has also appeared in media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Politico, Forbes, Vogue, and podcasts like Armchair Expert and GOOP with Gwyneth Paltrow.
Dr. Vasan is from West Virginia; growing up, she was an active civic entrepreneur (founded and served as National President of ACS Teens, a nationwide network of teen volunteers for the American Cancer Society), public health activist (directed campaign to prevent the loss of WV’s $1.9 Billion Master Tobacco Settlement funds), and scientist (won the $50K top Grand Prize at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair and presented her research during the Nobel Prize Festivities). A former Olympic Torchbearer and West Virginia's Junior Miss, she was named one of "America's top 10 youth volunteers" by Prudential as well as a National Gold Award Young Women of Distinction, the highest honor in Girl Scouting. She majored in Government at Harvard, graduating as one of Glamour Magazine's Top 10 College Women, and received an MD from Harvard Medical School, where she was voted by classmates as a commencement speaker. Dr. Vasan graduated from Stanford's Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program, where she was a Chief Resident, and received an MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Connect with her @NinaVasan on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
