ELIAS ABOUJAOUDE
Psychiatry Professor and Researcher at Stanford University
Author of several books, including Virtually You and 2024's A Leader's Destiny: Why Psychology, Personality, and Character Make All the Difference
Dr. Aboujaoude has conducted pioneering research on the interface between technology and psychology, he sounded an early alarm in the heart of Silicon Valley about the psychological and cultural costs of runaway internet technologies, and with his most recent book, has been praised as a "distinctive, thought-provoking view on leadership in the twenty-first century.”
Dr. Elias Aboujaoude is a psychiatry professor, researcher and author at Stanford University, where he heads the Anxiety Disorders Section and the OCD Clinic. He has also held positions at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the University of California in Berkeley, the University of California in San Francisco and the University of York in the United Kingdom. Dr. Aboujaoude has conducted pioneering research on the interface between technology and psychology. In Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality (New York Times Editors’ Choice), he sounded an early alarm in the heart of Silicon Valley about the psychological and cultural costs of runaway internet technologies. His most recent book, A Leader’s Destiny: Why Psychology, Personality and Character Make All the Difference, has been praised as a "distinctive, thought-provoking view on leadership in the twenty-first century.” In it, he debunks a “leadership industrial complex” of executive coaches, training programs and leadership bootcamps that promises leadership gold as he explores the true underpinnings of successful and happy leadership.
Alongside his academic work, Dr. Aboujaoude has served in several roles in the tech startup sector and co-founded the first telemedicine company in Silicon Valley to deliver remote mental health care.
His work has been widely covered, including in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Congressional Quarterly, Wired and TIME, and on National Public Radio, BBC, CNN, FOX and CBS. He has lectured in over 20 countries, and to audiences that vary from university-wide convocations to CIA personnel.
Speech topics
A Leader’s Destiny: Why Psychology, Personality and Character Make All the Difference
There have never been more leadership training opportunities. At the same time, there have never been more leadership failures. In this talk, author and Stanford psychiatrist Elias Aboujaoude puts leadership “on the couch,” with a provocative exploration of its crucial psychological, personality and character foundations. Along the way, he pokes a sharp elbow into what he calls a “leadership industrial complex” of executive coaches, professors of leadership and leadership bootcamps that promise to deliver leadership gold but may be making a bad problem worse. This talk provides the keys for how psychology aligns with effective and happy leadership. The result is to empower people to understand themselves and step up if they have what it takes to lead—or find equally rewarding, often superior, ways to achieve fulfillment if they don’t.
The Illusion of Knowledge: How New Technologies Are Making Us Less Smart
Reading, writing, attention span and memory—crucial components of cognitive life—have all been radically transformed by internet-related technologies, including AI. While access to books has never been easier, fewer people can read a book from start to finish. Writing has been similarly transformed, with bitmojis and e-language shortcuts replacing complex thoughts and with homework being outsourced to ChatGPT and the 10,000,000 papers you get when you search “term paper.” Attention is also being compromised as the rates of ADHD—and the number of prescriptions of the powerful stimulant drugs used to treat it—skyrocket. Finally, our memory “muscles” are not being exercised as increasingly students ask: “Why memorize any information when anything I may possibly want to know is only a Google search away?” This talk reflects on the collective 21st century cognitive decline and how to deploy technology in a way that doesn’t diminish our intellectual powers.
Technology vs. Psychology: From Addiction to Cure
Stanford author and psychiatrist Elias Aboujaoude was among the first voices to warn, in the heart of Silicon Valley, of the costs to mental health, democracy and culture overall of runaway internet-related technologies. A the same, he was an early proponent of telemental health, co-founding the first Silicon Valley startup to offer remote psychological treatment. This talk covers the rich intersection of technology and psychology in its negative manifestations (cyberbullying, gaming addiction, privacy violations, online aggression) and therapeutic potential (video delivery that increases access to care, VR therapy, AI therapy). The result is to appreciate the very “mixed bag” legacy of technology so far and to steer its future evolution in more beneficial and less harmful directions.
Books
A Leader's Destiny: Why Psychology, Personality, and Character Make All the Difference
A psychiatrist puts leadership “on the couch,” with a provocative exploration of its crucial, often ignored, psychological and personal character foundations.
Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality
The first scrutiny of the virtual world’s transformative power on our psychology, Virtually You demonstrates how real life is being reconfigured in the image of a chat room, and how our identity increasingly resembles that of our avatar.
Compulsive Acts: A Psychiatrist's Tales of Ritual and Obsession
In this compelling book, we meet a man who can't let anyone get within a certain distance of his nose, two kleptomaniacs from very different walks of life, an Internet addict who chooses virtual life over real life, a professor with a dangerous gambling habit, and others with equally debilitating compulsive conditions.