Smart Talk: Inspiring Conversations with Exceptional People

Kristin Neff is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, conducting the first empirical studies on self-compassion over a decade ago.

Max H. Bazerman is Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the Co-Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. Max's research focuses on decision making, negotiation, and ethics. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of twenty books (including The Power of Noticing, Simon and Schuster, 2014; and Blind Spots [with Ann Tenbrunsel], Princeton University Press, 2011) and over 200 research articles and chapters.

Maria is a contributing writer for The New Yorker online, where she writes a weekly column with a focus on psychology and science. Her first book, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (Viking/Penguin, 2013), was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into seventeen languages.

Dr. Joan Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Law and Hastings Foundation Chair at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and has authored or co-authored seven books. The New York Times called Joan Williams “something of a rock star”. Rachel Dempsey earned her bachelor’s degree in Literature from Yale University in 2009 and is currently a student at Yale Law School. She has blogged for Amnesty International and the Huffington Post, and her posts with Joan have been published on Psychology Today, New Deal 2.0, the Huffington Post, and MomsRising and excerpted in Time magazine.