James R. Doty, MD

James Doty is a clinical professor of neurosurgery at Stanford and the founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, which studies the science of compassion with collaborators including the Dalai Lama. He is the author of the bestselling memoir Into the Magic Shop and of Mind Magic.

He grew up in poverty with a disabled father, later made and lost a fortune in medical technology, and gave away much of what remained — an arc he uses to argue that compassion is a trainable capacity with measurable effects on health.