Maya Shankar, PhD

Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and the creator and host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans, which examines how people navigate change and has been honored by Apple as a best show of the year. She holds a PhD in cognitive psychology from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and did postdoctoral work at Stanford.

She founded and led the White House Behavioral Science Team in the Obama administration and has advised the United Nations and others on applying behavioral science to public policy. A former violinist who trained at Juilliard, she stopped playing after an injury — an early experience of identity loss that runs through her work on change.