Why Mindfulness and Business?
Today’s leaders face a range of fast-paced, dynamic leadership challenges that center around the ability to make sound, ethical decisions in the face of ever-increasing stress and instability. Feelings of uncertainty can undermine decisions, leading to costly mistakes that impact individuals, organizations, and potentially entire industries.
Business leaders – both in business school and in the marketplace – need the tools to manage these situations from the inside out. Self-awareness, decision-making, innovation, compassion, courage, and resilience in the workforce are rapidly becoming essential – not just optional – competencies for the survival and sustainability of successful, ethical organizations.
Recognizing this need, an increasing number of blue chip and Fortune 500 companies are offering meditation, mindfulness and mind training to their employees and integrating these principles into their daily work environments, including Google, General Mills, Goldman Sachs, Apple, Medtronic, Genetech, McKinsey, Deutsche Bank, Intel, Proctor & Gamble and Comcast, among others.
At NYU, Global Spiritual Life has received multiple requests for training in mindfulness and business from business undergraduate and graduate students, Stern student affairs professionals, and faculty and staff seeking these tools for their students. The quantity and diversity of these requests have pointed to a strong need for these offerings on campus that will only multiply as the business world grows to see mindfulness-based competencies as a critical piece of leadership. NYU Stern’s Mindfulness in Business Initiative aims to foster the continued integration of mindfulness throughout the business education landscape.
Who We Are
The NYU Stern Leadership Development Program partners with the Global Spiritual Life at NYU to introduce the benefits of Mindfulness in Business by developing workshops, speaker series, and promoting active mindful pratice. Global Spiritual Life at NYU is an open, authentic, and vibrant community at the forefront of international conversations on religion and spirituality in higher education. Our mission is to offer environments and tools for transformative multifaith and spiritual encounters at NYU and beyond.
The Mindfulness Project is a pioneering program within Global Spiritual life that unites faculty, staff and students at NYU who are interested in practicing meditation, exploring life’s largest questions, and learning from multiple mindfulness traditions in order to deepen daily awareness and transform the world. The mission of the project is to cultivate the next generation of mindfulness leaders with the capacity and drive to bring mindfulness to all aspects of the human experience.
Yael Shy, Esq., is the Director of Global Spiritual Life at NYU.
She is also the founder and Director of the Mindfulness Project at NYU and the Of Many Institute for Multifaith Leadership. She has been practicing meditation for over twelve years, and served as the first Director of Development of the Brooklyn Zen Center, where she is currently the Co-Chair of the Membership Committee. She is a graduate of the Jewish Mindfulness Teacher Training Program through the Institute for Jewish Spirituality in 2009, and was a co‐founder of the Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn in 2008. In 2010, she was named one of the “36 under 36” change‐makers transforming the Jewish world by the Jewish Week newspaper. Prior to joining the Center for Spiritual Life, Shy served for five years as the Director of Development and Education at the NYU Center on Violence and Recovery. She is an alumna of New York University’s College of Arts and Science and Northeastern University School of Law.
In the News
Huffington Post: Mindfulness and Leadership
Huffington Post: Changing Business Education Through Mindful Leadership
Poets & Quants: Leadership Lessons From The Wild
Huffington Post: ReWork: Rethinking Work and Well-being
Huffington Post: Reflection on Mindfulness in Business
Fortune: Is ‘mindfulness’ just another management fad?
Washington Square News: Stern program will benefit work ethics
Huffington Post: NYU’s New Mindfulness in Business Initiative
The Higher Life
By Lizzie Widdicombe // This article was originally posted on newyorker.com. ast April, in New York City, three thousand people gathered for thrive, yet another ted-style ideas conference offering mental and spiritual rejuvenation to the business world. It was organized by the “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski and the new-media mogul Arianna Huffington, and conceived, Huffington said, to […]
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Executives becoming better leaders through mindfulness
By Laura Montgomery // This article was originally posted on execed.economist.com. Think of qualities and behaviours popularly used to describe effective, authentic leaders: focus, observation, objectivity, balanced decision-making. These are precisely the characteristics cultivated through mindfulness meditation. And today, even the most profit-driven companies and c-suiters are turning to mindfulness techniques to help them manage […]
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This Study Says Stop Working and Do This at 11 A.M. Every Day
By guest blogger Brian Scudamore, founder and CEO of O2E Brands // This article was originally posted on inc.com. Photo credit: Getty Images Two researchers at Baylor University recently performed a fascinating empirical study that came to a surprising conclusion. The best time to take a break is in the mid-morning–not the afternoon. According to the […]
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This Is What Real Courage Looks Like
Have the courage to do this one thing and you’ll never look at giving up in the same way again. By: Thomas Koulopoulos // This article was originally posted on inc.com “…never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of […]
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5 Tips To Create Effective Internal Communications With Your Team
By Rich Kneece // This article was originally posted on fastcompany.com. Effective communication between a company and its employees enables businesses to fully tap into the unique knowledge, insights, and talents of its people. Often, the benefits stretch beyond pure profit. More open discussions help build a strong community within a firm, allowing workers to […]
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Spending 10 Minutes a Day on Mindfulness Subtly Changes the Way You React to Everything
This article was originally posted on hbr.org. Leaders across the globe feel that the unprecedented busyness of modern-day leadership makes them more reactive and less proactive. There is a solution to this hardwired, reactionary leadership approach: mindfulness. Having trained thousands of leaders in the techniques of this ancient practice, we’ve seen over and over again that […]
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Lessons in Mindful Leadership
By Andrew Greenblatt of Journey Meditation Leadership can be simplified into a few simple, but by no means easy, tasks: understanding yourself, understanding others, and causing results. To those at the Mindful Leadership Summit, the first two don’t necessarily precede the third, but to any effective leader, the three are inextricably linked. If we take […]
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Mindfulness at Work: Navigating Your MBA Career in the Modern Age
By Visnja Milidragovic This post originally appeared on topmba.com. Circumstances of the modern age are creating an unprecedented MBA career landscape for ambitious MBAs. Diversified education offerings and a more dynamic, global job market have given way to more empowered employees, including young MBAs, who are increasingly moving away from merely wanting ‘a better paying […]
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Chade-Meng Tan Discusses Mindfulness with the Stern Community at Leadership Development Speaker Series
This post originally appeared on stern.nyu.edu. Chade-Meng Tan (Meng), a Google pioneer, award-winning engineer, international bestselling author and philanthropist spoke to the NYU Stern community as part of the School’s Leadership Development Speaker Series. He currently serves as co-chair of One Billion Acts of Peace and chairman of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. Meng […]
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Developing Leaders at NYU Stern with Mindfulness in Business
Written by Visnja Milidragovic This post originally appeared on topmba.com. NYU Stern’s Leadership Development Program is part of the business school’s focus on supporting MBAs to deepen their self-awareness as a component of their continual evolution as effective leaders. The program’s focus on developing a deeper self-awareness is facilitated by introducing and teaching mindfulness in […]
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3’s of One with Chade-Meng Tan of SIYLI
Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is a Google pioneer, award-winning engineer, international bestselling author, thought leader and philanthropist whose work has received 7 nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. He retired from Google as its Jolly Good Fellow at the age of 45. He is co-chair of One Billion Acts of Peace and chairman of the Search Inside […]
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Centered city (NYU)
This post originally appeared on themindfulmba.com There are few places in the world more vibrant than New York City. When you combine the powerful influences of the city with the epic transition of the college or graduate school years, you’ve got yourself a recipe for an exciting but potentially bumpy, and overwhelming, ride. During a time […]
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7 Things Mindful People Do Differently and How To Get Started
This article originally appeared on mindful.org Elisha Goldstein on the ways we can increase the intention of being more present in our lives. By Elisha Goldstein The intention of being more present in our lives is continuing to grow and touch an increasing amount of people. I have friends who I never would have imagined […]
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Change leader, change thyself
By Nate Boaz and Erica Ariel Fox This article originally appeared in the McKinsey Quarterly, March 2014 Anyone who pulls the organization in new directions must look inward as well as outward. Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, famously wrote, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Tolstoy’s dictum is […]
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Creating Value by Promoting Values
This article originally appeared on instituteformindfulleadership.org by Institute Instructor Patricio Barriga Sometimes a great blessing comes so well disguised that we have to work to uncover its value. I learned this after collapsing in an airport. Before that, I had approached work as executives so often do; shoulder fully to the wheel, meticulous in following […]
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6 Words That Will Forever Change How You Wake Up in the Morning
This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com Does anyone else out there feel like his or her brain is kind of, well, stupid in the morning? About a year ago, after reading The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, I made a conscious decision to wake up earlier every day. I wanted to accomplish my most important […]
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5 Steps to Investing Your Energy More Wisely
This was originally posted on hbr.org By Peter Bregman It was another conversation about Donald Trump. Or Ted Cruz. Maybe it was about Hillary Clinton. Honestly, I can’t remember. What I do remember is that it was heated, frustrating, and tiring. A few hours later I was still thinking about it and still annoyed. On […]
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Is Something Lost When We Use Mindfulness as a Productivity Tool?
This was originally posted on hbr.org By Charlotte Lieberman I came to mindfulness as a healing practice after overcoming an addiction to Adderall during my junior year of college. I found myself in this situation because I thought that using Adderall to help me focus was no big deal — an attitude shared by 81% of […]
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What’s Called for Now? Mindful Leadership & the Power of Being Present
This was originally posted on LinkedIn By Kymm Bartlett Pollack When Janice Marturano, now Executive Director of the Institute for Mindful Leadership but then a VP/Deputy General Counsel for General Mills, invited me to participate in the 2nd Mindfulness Retreat she hosted, I immediately said yes. My friend Becky had attended the 1st Mindfulness Retreat and […]
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Don’t Overmonitor Your Goals
This was originally posted on hbr.org By Dana Rousemaniere Having goals is a good thing. But the current trend of self-monitoring, whether through time trackers such as Toggl or fitness trackers such as Fitbit, means we’re constantly evaluating ourselves — the sales we make, the hours we work, or the miles we run. Overmonitoring can get tiring and […]
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How Solitude Can Change Your Brain in Profound Ways
This was originally posted on fastcompany.com By Jane Porter I recently got back from a week of solitude in a house off Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts. I was there to focus on finishing my book of short stories without distraction, conversations, emails, deadlines, and the thrum and pulse of New York City life, all competing […]
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6 Ways to Stop Overthinking Everything
This was originally published on huffingtonpost.com By Amy Morin Whether they beat themselves up over a mistake they made yesterday or fret about how they’re going to succeed tomorrow, overthinkers are plagued by distressing thoughts–and their inability to get out of their own heads leaves them in a state of constant anguish. While everyone overthinks things […]
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Make Yourself Immune to Secondhand Stress
This was originally published on hbr.org By Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan Over the past decade, we have learned how our brains are hardwired for emotional contagion. Emotions spread via a wireless network of mirror neurons, which are tiny parts of the brain that allow us to empathize with others and understand what they’re feeling. […]
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4 Attributes the Best Leaders Constantly Hone
This was originally published on entrepreneur.com By Tor Constantino The table stakes of good leadership are pretty straightforward. Good leaders have to be strong communicators; have a clear vision; be powerful persuaders; have solid business instincts; possess unflinching character and integrity; maintain a critical understanding of the competitive marketplace; be a strategic thinker; have expert decision-making […]
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The ‘Perfect Storm’ That Turned Janice Marturano Into A Mindful Leader
This was originally published on Huffington Post By Carolyn Gregoire Janice Marturano had been working as a vice president for General Mills for nearly two decades when she hit the most difficult period of her life and career. Presiding over the company’s $10.5 billion acquisition of Pillsbury in 2000, she found herself working 18 hours a day, seven days […]
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How Asking 5 Questions Allowed Me to Eat Dinner With My Kids
This was originally published on nytimes.com By Charles Duhigg Four years ago, when I began working on a book about the secrets of productivity, I had a hidden motivation: I wanted to figure out how to eat dinner with my kids. Both my wife and I had demanding jobs. We have two sons – now […]
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The Business Case for Meditation
This post originally appeared on Fast Company David Zax Matthew Bellows dropped out of Brown his sophomore year in 1988. His father had gone to Brown; Bellows had a rebellious streak, and this was his rebellion. Bellows wandered the country and wound up living in an intentional community north of Phoenix called Arcosanti. He stayed […]
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How Meditation Changes the Brain and Body
This post was originally published on nytimes.com By Gretchen Reynolds Illustration by Anna Parini The benefits of mindfulness meditation, increasingly popular in recent years, are supposed to be many: reduced stress and risk for various diseases, improved well-being, a rewired brain. But the experimental bases to support these claims have been few. Supporters of the practice […]
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Want To Be a Better Leader? Observe More and React Less
This was originally posted on McKinsey & Company By Manish Chopra Overloaded executives need coping mechanisms. This personal reflection shows how meditation can help. Most time-strapped executives know they should plan ahead and prioritize, focus on the important as much as the urgent, invest in their health (including getting enough sleep), make time for family and […]
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The One Thing More Important Than Not Giving Up
This post was originally published on inc.com By Thomas Koulopoulos, Founder of Delphi Group Have the courage to do this one thing and you’ll never look at giving up in the same way again. “…never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to […]
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Gazing at Nature Makes You More Productive: An Interview with Kate Lee
This article originally appeared on hbr.org By Nicole Torres The research: University of Melbourne researchers Kate Lee, Kathryn Williams, Leisa Sargent, Nicholas Williams, and Katherine Johnson gave 150 subjects a menial task that involved hitting specific keystrokes when certain numbers flashed on a computer screen. After five minutes the subjects were given a 40-second break, […]
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15 Practical Ways To Find Your Zen At Work
This article originally appeared on HuffPost By Jo Confino This story is part of our monthlong “Work Well” initiative, which focuses on thriving in the workplace. You can find more stories from this project here. Given how much time we spend at work, it is a crying shame if we don’t get the most out […]
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The 5 Most Important Things We Learned About Mindfulness This Year
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.com 2014 may have been the year of the “mindful revolution,” but 2015 proved that mindfulness is here to stay. The more we learn about mindfulness — the cultivation of a focused awareness on the present moment, most commonly through meditation — the more health and well-being benefits we discover. […]
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Why NYU’s B-School Teaches Mindfulness, HBR.org
This article originally appeared on hbr.org By: Connie Kim, Director of Leadership Development at NYU Stern School of Business Yael Shy, Esq., Senior Director of Global Spiritual Life at New York University Photo: The Equanimous Mind Manish Chopra, a mindfulness practitioner who’s a partner at McKinsey and author of The Equanimous Mind, recently came to NYU’s Stern […]
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Your body language shapes who you are (TED.com)
Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” — standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident — can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our […]
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What You Miss When You Take Notes on Your Laptop
This article originally appeared on hbr.org By: Maggy McGloin Even in my relatively short foray into office life, I notice that few people bring a pen and notebook to meetings. I’ve been told that over the years, the spiral notebooks and pens once prevalent during weekly meetings have been replaced with laptops and slim, touch-screen […]
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Mindfulness Is Transforming Leadership
This article originally appeared on huffpost.com By: Bill George Last week my wife Penny and I had the opportunity to keynote the Mindful Leadership Summit. At the summit, 750 participants gathered to discuss how mindfulness practices could change global leadership for the better. As Charles Lief, president of Naropa University, said, “The opening of all […]
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McKinsey & Company’s Manish Chopra on Mindfulness
Manish Chopra, partner at McKinsey & Company and author of “The Equanimous Mind,” led a discussion with a group of NYU Stern MBA students on the benefits of mindfulness in business, as part of NYU Stern’s Leadership Development Program (LDP) this fall. Chopra described his journey to mindfulness and shared three personal revelations from the practice: […]
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Mindfulness Helps You Become a Better Leader
This article originally appeared on the Harvard Business Review (HBR.org) By: Bill George Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, I have sensed from many leaders that they want to do a better job of leading in accordance with their personal values. The crisis exposed the fallacies of measuring success in monetary terms and left […]
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Tensie Whelan Joins NYU Stern to Establish New Center for Sustainable Business
New York University Stern School of Business announced over the summer that Tensie Whelan, former president of the Rainforest Alliance and a key leader in the realm of environmental activism and stewardship, will join the Stern faculty to establish and lead a new Center for Sustainable Business beginning in January 2016. The Center will assist […]
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How Jack Dorsey Can Keep His Chill While Running Two Companies
This article originally appeared on HuffPost Business By Alexander C. Kaufman & Damon Beres These mindfulness tips apply as much to people working minimum-wage jobs as they do to a chief executive. Jack Dorsey has his plate full — doubly full. Twitter on Monday named him its permanent CEO, nearly four months after he took […]
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THE STERN OPPY – FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: PROFESSOR DOLLY CHUGH ON FACING YOUR FEARS
This article originally appeared in the Stern Opportunity (The NYU Stern Graduate Student Newspaper) Photo credit: The New York Times Interview by Nick Pulito, MBA Class of 2016 Dolly Chugh is an Associate Professor in the Management and Organizations Department at Stern. I had the pleasure of taking her Leadership in Organizations (LiO) course last […]
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Executives becoming better leaders through mindfulness
* This article was originally published on Economist.com, with professional input from Clear Path Executive Coaching NYU Stern LDP works closely with Career Path Executive Coaching for collaboration, workshop facilitation and leadership coaching. by Laura Montgomery, an independent higher-education consultant Think of qualities and behaviors popularly used to describe effective, authentic leaders: focus, observation, objectivity, balanced decision-making. These […]
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Mindfulness in Business by Yael Shy, Esq., Senior Director, Global Spiritual Life at NYU
My law school orientation, like most orientations, was a blur of faculty, staff, student and alumni speaking to me and my new classmates about everything from financial aid to note-taking skills. The only thing I remember now from those three intensive days is one student, who spoke to us near the end of the third […]
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How Mindfulness Improves Sleep (HuffPost.com)
By Adam Hoffman *This artical was originally posted on HuffPost.com New study: even short meditation training can reduce stress and improve sleep quality This article first appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. In November, GGSC is hosting a summit on Mindfulness and Well-Being at Work; find […]
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8 Things Positive People Do Differently (HuffPost.com)
Co-authored by Elena Nicolaou, writing intern at Avelist * This article was originally posted on Avelist.com and HuffPost.com Some people go through life carried forward on the wings of good vibrations. These people are the chipper, resilient, Leslie Knopes of the world. But not all of us are born with the superpower to be naturally positive. […]
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Meditation for Strivers (The New Yorker)
* This article originally appeared on newyorker.com During a trip to the United States in the nineteen-seventies, the Tibetan scholar, translator, and lifelong meditator Lobsang Lhalungpa found himself in San Francisco’s financial district. Struck by the hordes of rushing bodies, he stopped, turned to his guides, and said, “I don’t see any humans here.” This was before […]
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11/9 – Mindfulness Discussion with Manish Chopra, Partner, McKinsey & Company
When the Managing Partner of one of the world’s most prestigious business consultancies describes Mindfulness as “essential to the health of my mind, just as bathing, eating and exercising are critical to the health of my body”, it may be worth hearing more. Learn how the experience of mindfulness has transformed the life of Manish […]
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