Why Not Democratise Neuroscience?

Today, founder of SharpBrains - Alvaro Fernandez interviewed our CEO Silvia Damiano on her view of why we need to democratise neuroscience and leadership.

The SharpBrains Virtual Summit fea­tures over 30 of the world’s top sci­en­tists, inno­va­tors and prac­ti­tion­ers work­ing on evidence-based and scal­able ways to define, mea­sure and pro­mote brain fit­ness. Silvia will be speaking at the Summit on October 30th. Join us in shaping the practice and future of brain fitness!

What is your cur­rent job title and orga­ni­sa­tion, and what excites you the most about work­ing there?

I am the CEO of the About my Brain Insti­tute, based in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, with activ­i­ties in Europe and North Amer­ica. What excites me the most is work­ing with the young tal­ent in my organ­i­sa­tion, as a great way to keep my brain young and con­tin­u­ously learning.

Please tell us about your inter­est in brain health and per­for­mance. What areas are you most inter­ested in? What moti­vated you to pur­sue work in your field?

I had my own brain scanned last year and, being in the lead­er­ship space for so many years, I thought, this is great, but why not democ­ra­tise access to neu­ro­science?

I believe that being aware of our brain capa­bil­i­ties, and how to opti­mise them, is some­thing that every­body needs to do. The brain is at the cen­tre of what we do, it affects our decision-making process and the abil­ity to lead our­selves and oth­ers effectively.

What is one impor­tant thing you are work­ing on now, and where can peo­ple learn more about it?

We spe­cialise in assess­ing per­sonal lead­er­ship and organ­i­sa­tional capa­bil­ity, allow­ing peo­ple to have unique insights into how agile, inno­v­a­tive, col­lab­o­ra­tive they are, as well as mea­sur­ing items related to brain per­for­mance.

At the moment we are expand­ing our global reach by cer­ti­fy­ing con­sul­tants, coaches, Organ­i­sa­tional Devel­op­ment and Lead­er­ship spe­cial­ists, as well as change agents and busi­ness leaders.

What are 1–2 key things you’d like every per­son to under­stand about his/ her own brain and mind, that you think is com­monly mis­un­der­stood?

Peo­ple tend to com­pare them­selves with great lead­ers, such as Man­dela, Churchill, Gandhi, and they imme­di­ately limit them­selves think­ing they could never be like them. The real­ity is that any­one can improve their lead­er­ship capa­bil­ity and learn the skills required to influ­ence peo­ple and events.

We can change the behav­iours and habits that may be lim­it­ing our growth, and doing so we rewire our brains for the bet­ter, and then we con­tin­u­ally develop the capa­bil­i­ties to max­i­mize our unique potential.

Where do you see clear “low-hanging fruit” to shape the future and the prac­tice of brain fit­ness?

I believe that edu­cat­ing those who teach young minds is the best way into the future. New solu­tions devel­oped to enhance brain func­tion­al­ity should be within the reach of edu­ca­tors to help cre­ate a future gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who become more aware and con­scious of the poten­tial of their brains and minds.

What would you like the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit to accom­plish?

I would like to see the Sum­mit reach­ing every cor­ner of the planet so any­one can learn the impor­tance of brain fitness.

Finally, if I may…what do YOU do to stay sharp?

I stay sharp by cre­at­ing, learn­ing and shar­ing. I believe that when we work on some­thing we love, we are able to access the state of flow eas­ier. We can then become more resource­ful and bet­ter prob­lem solvers, over­com­ing exter­nal obsta­cles and neg­a­tive self-talk.

Originally Published on SharpBrains