Dan Siegel

Dan Siegel is the executive director of the Mindsight Institute and founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. At UCLA he was also principal co-investigator of the Center for Culture, Brain and Development and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he completed his postgraduate training at UCLA, specializing in pediatrics and in adult, adolescent and child psychiatry. A National Institute of Mental Health research training fellowship trained him in attachment research and narrative analysis, focusing on how relationships shape the ways we make sense of our lives and influence development across the lifespan.

An award-winning educator, Dan is the author of five New York Times bestsellers and over fifteen other books, translated into over forty languages. They include The Developing Mind, Mindsight, Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence, and The Power of Showing Up. He is the founding editor of the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, which has published over one hundred books on the mind and mental health.

He coined the term "mindsight" for the human capacity to perceive the mind of the self and others. He describes it as a learnable skill that helps people move off autopilot, "name and tame" difficult emotions, and build more integrated brains and relationships. He also coined the term interpersonal neurobiology, in The Developing Mind in 1999. It names an interdisciplinary field that builds on many disciplines to form a coherent picture of the whole of human reality. His work centers on integration, the linking of differentiated parts, which he says shows up outwardly as kindness and compassion. His Wheel of Awareness is a practice for fostering that integration.

Through the Mindsight Institute he offers online courses and a global learning community. Dan has been invited to speak to mental health professionals, neuroscientists, corporate leaders, educators, parents, policy-makers and clergy. His audiences have included the Dalai Lama and organizations such as Google, Apple and Microsoft.