Thought Leader Profile
Nina Vasan
Founder and Executive Director, Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation, Stanford University School of Medicine
Nina Vasan, MD, is a psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and pioneer in digital mental-health innovation. She is a psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at Stanford University, where she is the founder and executive director of Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health and Innovation. Brainstorm is the world's first academic laboratory dedicated to transforming mental health at scale through clinically informed consumer tech products. Brainstorm's experts worked with Pinterest to design the "compassionate search" experience, which provides treatments for anxiety, depression, and self-harm for Pinterest's 450 million users and has been distributed to 23 countries. This work was named by Fast Company as a "Most Innovative Wellness Project" and "Best Designs for Social Good."
Previously chief medical officer of mental-health startup Real, Nina has worked as a healthcare advisor to the UN, to the WHO Director-General's Office, and to two presidential campaigns. She majored in government at Harvard University, graduating as one of Glamour magazine's Top 10 College Women, and received an MD from Harvard Medical School, where she was voted by classmates as a commencement speaker. She graduated from Stanford's Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program, where she was a chief resident, and received an MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business. She co-authored the #1 Amazon bestselling book Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action, and Social Innovation and was named by Business Insider as one of its 30 Under 40 in Healthcare. Her thought leadership has been cited in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and more.
Speaker at FiRe 2023
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News for Nina Vasan
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Posted on Wed Mar 12, 2025, 7:00 am
This 4-question quiz from Stanford psychiatrists can help protect from the da... -
Posted on Fri Jul 14, 2023, 7:00 am
How to Wean a Teen Off Social Media (Published 2023) - The New York Times -
Posted on Tue May 2, 2023, 7:00 am
Stanford researchers scoured every reputable study for the link between video... -
Posted on Tue May 2, 2023, 7:00 am
Stanford researchers scoured every reputable study for the link between video... -
Posted on Thu Mar 25, 2021, 11:46 pm
HAI Weekly Seminar with Nina Vasan and Sara Johansen - Stanford HAI -
Posted on Tue Jul 14, 2020, 7:00 am
An Inside Look at Stanford's Mental Health Innovation Class - Business Inside... -
Posted on Tue Nov 26, 2019, 8:00 am
What You Can Do to Unlock Better Mental Health, According to Stanford Researc... -
Posted on Mon Sep 16, 2019, 7:00 am
Stanford's Brainstorm lab works with Pinterest, others to apply product desig... -
Posted on Fri Jun 1, 2018, 7:00 am
Inspirational brain health expert hopes to shatter the stigma associated with... -
Posted on Tue Nov 22, 2016, 8:00 am
Science fairs: Opportunity to make a deep impact - societyforscience.org