About Dr. Nina Vasan

Dr. Nina Vasan is a psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and pioneer in digital mental health innovation. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford, where she is the founder and Executive Director of Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation. Brainstorm’s experts worked with Pinterest to design the “compassionate search” user 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 the “Most Innovative Wellness Projects” and “Best Designs for Social Good.” They also created The New York Times-featured “Stanford Social Media Safety Plan,” a practical and collaborative method for users of all ages to develop healthier social media behaviors. Having spent over a decade addressing social media's positive and negative impact on mental health, they are now applying the lessons learned to make Generative AI safer and healthier via product design, research, education, and policy. 

She is a national leader at the American Psychiatric Association, where she founded the Psychiatry Innovation Lab and is the former Chair of the APA Committee on Innovation. Previously Chief Medical Officer of mental health startup Real, Dr. Vasan has worked as a healthcare advisor to the UN, the WHO Director-General’s Office, and to two presidential campaigns. She majored in Government at Harvard, 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 (MBA '18). She co-authored the #1 Amazon Best-Selling book "Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action, and Social Innovation" and was named by Business Insider as one of their 30 Under 40 in Healthcare. Her thought leadership has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and more. Connect with her @NinaVasan.