Jamil Zaki

Empathy is often stereotyped as a soft skill in organizations. In reality, the opposite is true: empathy is an organizational superpower that makes employees happier, collaboration more efficient, and leadership more effective. Jamil Zaki is an expert in empathy as a practice—something that anyone can build up and get better at over time. As the Director of Social Neuroscience at Stanford University, Jamil’s research has proven that becoming more empathetic in our personal and professional lives creates a more compassionate work culture, enhances our creativity, and bridges differences in a divided world. 

In his ground-breaking book The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, Jamil shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait—something we’re born with or not—but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. In an age where empathy is in short supply, Jamil is a bright light of optimism, giving us the stories of people who are building up their own empathy and fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. World-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck calls The War For Kindness a “landmark book,” saying that Jamil “gives us a revolutionary perspective on empathy: Empathy can be developed, and, when it is, people, relationships, organizations, and cultures are changed.”

Jamil is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. Using tools from psychology and neuroscience, he and his colleagues examine how empathy works and how people can learn to empathize more effectively. His writing on these topics has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.