Jamil Zaki

Jamil Zaki is a tenured associate professor of psychology at Stanford University. He and his colleagues study social connection, including empathy, cooperation, and trust (see ssnl.stanford.edu for details). He has pioneered a new perspective on empathy as a learnable skill, and much of his work focuses on training individuals, groups, and communities to empathize more effectively.

Dr. Zaki received his BA in cognitive neuroscience from Boston University and his PhD in psychology from Columbia University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Harvard Center for Brain Science. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and received about two dozen awards from scientific associations and universities. In 2019 he was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the US Government’s highest honor for researchers at his career stage.

In addition to his academic work, Dr. Zaki is active in outreach and public communication of science. He has written about human connection for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, and The New Yorker. In 2019, he published his first book, The War for Kindness, which NPR called a “wide-ranging, practical guide to making the world better.” Jamil regularly gives talks and trainings to a range of audiences, including Fortune 500 executives, middle schoolers, healthcare workers, and government officials. His TED and TEDx talks have been viewed over 3,000,000 times.