Rob Klein is a Ph.D. candidate in Developmental Psychology at Cornell University. His research focuses on self-concept development during adolescence and young adulthood, with an emphasis on gender and sexual identity, psychological well-being, and the unfolding of identity processes over time. Rob conducts research using community-based participatory methods and is committed to producing work that is pragmatic and serves a wider community. In parallel with his academic training, he has maintained a meditation practice for 15 years, which informs his interest in mindfulness-based and identity-affirming approaches to supporting adolescent well-being. He is grateful to dedicate his work to serving humanity.
Nichol Bradford stands at the forefront of human potential and AI, accelerating human transformation through technology investments, research, and global thought leadership.
Currently, Nichol serves as Executive-in-Residence for AI + HI at The Society for Human Resource Management, shaping global thinking on human-AI collaboration. She is also Co-Founder and Partner of Niremia Collective, an early stage venture fund focused on human potential technologies, and she co-founded TransformativeTech.org, the largest global ecosystem of founders, investors and innovators building tech for human flourishing.
Previously, as a senior interactive entertainment executive, Nichol held strategy, operations, marketing and production roles at major brands including Epic Games, Activision-Blizzard, Vivendi Games and Disney. She led operations for World of Warcraft China and Blizzard properties in China, played a key role on the Vivendi team responsible for the landmark $18B Activision-Blizzard merger deal, and helped produce record-breaking events in the metaverse at Epic Games.
Nichol has an MBA from The Wharton School, is Faculty at Singularity University, a Trustee at CIIS, and has been a Lecturer and Adjunct Professor at Stanford University.
Moving forward, Nichol is focused on advancing human potential through ethical and empowering AI — catalyzing a global ecosystem of innovators to create technology for human thriving.
Geshe la is a Lharampa Geshe of Sera Jey Monastery born in Penpo, Tibet. He is one of the monastery’s main philosophy teachers, the Director of the Sera Jey Modern Education Department, and performs many other roles both in the monastery and in society.
Geshe Thabkhe is a graduate of the five-year ETSI pilot program and the Tenzin Gyatso Science Scholars Program at Emory University. He completed the two-year residency program at Emory in 2013.
He has attended and participated in numerous conferences and symposia, and served on the faculty of the 2025 Mind & Life Dialogue on “Minds, Artificial Intelligence, and Ethics.”
Jay Van Bavel is a Professor of Psychology & Neural Science at New York University, an affiliate at the Stern School of Business in Management and Organizations, Professor at the Norwegian School of Economics, and Director of the Center for Conflict & Cooperation. He is also an Associate Editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus. Jay completed his PhD at the University of Toronto and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Ohio State University.
Jay studies how collective concerns—group identities, moral values, and political beliefs—shape the mind, brain, and behavior. His work addresses issues of group identity, social motivation, intergroup conflict & polarization, cooperation, beliefs & misinformation, moral judgment & decision-making, social media, and public health using a wide variety of methods.
Jay has published over 150 academic papers (including in Science, Nature, PNAS) and is a Clarivate highly cited researcher (in the top 1% of researchers worldwide). He co-authored The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony (winner of the APA William James Book Award). His work has also been cited in the US Supreme Court and Senate and he has consulted with the White House, United Nations, European Union, and World Health Organization.
Jay is an active science communicator with over 100,000 social media followers. He writes the Power of Us newsletter and has written for The New York Times, BBC, The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, Guardian, LA Times, TIME, and The Washington Post. He has given talks at dozens of psychology departments and business schools, as well as academic conferences, professional events, and non-academic organizations (including the World Science Festival, Aspen Ideas Festival, The Atlantic Festival, World Bank, and TEDx).
Jay teaches courses on Social Psychology, Social Neuroscience, Attitudes and Evaluation, Intergroup Relations, Group Identity, Moral Psychology, Professional Development, and Introduction to Psychology. He received the NYU Golden Dozen Teaching Award for teaching excellence. He also co-founded a mentoring column for Science Magazine and has created several educational videos (e.g., TED-Ed).
He has received several awards, including the Young Investigator Award for distinguished contributions in social neuroscience from the Society for Social Neuroscience, the Young Scholars Award for outstanding achievements in social and personality psychology from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology, the Janet T. Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science, the F.J. McGuigan Early Career Investigator Prize from the American Psychological Foundation, the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize, and the SPSP Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize.
Jay’s work has been generously supported by the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, American Psychological Foundation, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, John Templeton Foundation, Templeton World Charity Foundation, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, AE Foundation, Google Jigsaw, and Norwegian Research Council.

