The Decision Corner

In this episode of The Decision Corner, we are lucky to be joined by Kevin Werbach. Professor Werbach is a renowned expert on emerging technology and its implications in the legal and public policy spheres. He is a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Prior to his position at Wharton, Kevin Werbach has been an advisor in the Obama administration and a member of Obama’s transition team. He is also a widely sought after writer and speaker. He has been featured on a diverse range of platforms and his academic work is cited in top publications. In 2018, he wrote The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust, where he explores the nuances and consequences of distributed ledger technologies. Some of the topics we discuss in this podcast include:

This episode of The Decision Corner features Olivier Berthier: data scientist, software designer, and CEO of Moneythor. Moneythor is a digital infrastructure company that specializes in banking solutions that use machine learning, big data analytics, and behavioral science to orient financial systems towards customer-centric ends. Some topics we discuss include:

In this episode of The Decision Corner, we discuss giving, incentives, and the ethics of behavioral science with Ari Kagan and Nick Fitz, the co-founders and executives at Momentum. Momentum is a charity that ties donations to everyday choices. For example, every time Donald Trump tweets, the app will have you automatically donate 10 cents to civil rights and racial justice groups. Nick and Ari have extensive research experience in behavioral science. They both held senior positions at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University before starting up their donation company.

Topics mentioned in this episode include:

In this episode of The Decision Corner, Brooke Struck invites Erez Yoeli to share his insights on how people tick. Dr. Erez Yoeli is a research associate at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and co-director of the Applied Cooperation Team (ACT). ACT is a team of researchers that applies insights from the social sciences towards increasing contributions to real-world public goods.

Erez designs and tests large-scale interventions to promote altruistic behaviors such as charitable donations, volunteering, resource conservation, and medication adherence. He has worked as a researcher at Harvard University’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and Yale University’s Human Cooperation Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. In this episode, we discuss:

In this episode of The Decision Corner, Brooke sits down with Peter Brooks. Peter is a longtime employee at Barclays, the esteemed British banking organization. He joined over a decade ago, when the bank established the world’s first dedicated Behavioural Finance Team. Currently, he is the Chief Behavioural Scientist at Barclays.

Peter asserts that his job is primarily finding true value for customers. He identifies ways to improve customers’ decisions and money habits, while exploring how we can all make changes for the better. The Decision Lab was interested in getting a little bit of his time to hear about how that mission is going. Some topics we discuss in this conversation include:

In today’s episode of The Decision Corner, we are joined by Chris Larkin, the senior director of impact at IDEO.org. At IDEO, Chris works with design teams to integrate systems thinking, social and behavior change frameworks, and measurement in the creative design process. She has a long track record of impact in social and international development. She has worked at companies such as Girl Effect and BBC Media Action to pursue creative and effective strategies to engineer behavioral change.

Chris holds an MSc in Occupational and Organisational Psychology and a Bachelor’s in Applied Psychology. She has worked extensively in East Africa and has lived in Dublin, London, Yangon, and New York.

In this episode, we discuss:

In today’s episode of The Decision Corner, we are joined by Chris Larkin, the senior director of impact at IDEO.org. At IDEO, Chris works with design teams to integrate systems thinking, social and behavior change frameworks, and measurement in the creative design process. She has a long track record of impact in social and international development. She has worked at companies such as Girl Effect and BBC Media Action to pursue creative and effective strategies to engineer behavioral change.

Chris holds an MSc in Occupational and Organisational Psychology and a Bachelor’s in Applied Psychology. She has worked extensively in East Africa and has lived in Dublin, London, Yangon, and New York.

In this episode, we discuss:

In today’s episode of The Decision Corner, we are joined by Gretchen Rubin, a writer, speaker, and influencer on the subjects of happiness, habits, and human nature. Gretchen Rubin is the author of several books, including the number one New York Times bestseller, The Happiness Project. Her books have sold over 3.5 million copies and been published in more than thirty languages globally.

Gretchen has spoken at places such as GE, Google, LinkedIn, Accenture, Facebook, Procter & Gamble, Yale Law School, Harvard Business School, and Wharton as well as at conferences such as SXSW, World Domination Summit, the Atlantic, Alt Design, and Behance’s 99u.

Gretchen graduated from Yale University with a BA in English in 1989 and a J.D in 1994, where she served as the Editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. Some of her specialties include habits, happiness, positive psychology, writing, memoirs, blogging, social media, self-improvement, self-help, non-fiction, and podcasts.

Her "Four Tendencies" personality framework divides people into Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels, which will both be routinely mentioned throughout this episode. You can take the quick, free quiz here.

In this episode, we discuss:

In today’s episode of The Decision Corner, we are joined by Matt Wallaert, a pioneer in applied behavioral science and a serial entrepreneur. Matt has over a decade of experience applying behavioral science to practical problems, ranging from startups to Fortune 500s to an array of prosocial side projects. He has given hundreds of talks on the science of behavior change, including appearances at the United Nations and South by SouthWest.

Recently, he brought behavioral science into healthcare management as Clover Health’s Chief Behavioral Officer. There, he directs one of the world’s largest behavioral science teams, combining qualitative researchers, quantitative researchers, and project managers. His book, Start at the End: How to Build Products that Create Change, proposes a science-based process to create behavior change that can be implemented in organizations of any size and industry.

In this episode, we discuss:

In today’s episode of The Decision Corner, we are joined by Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University. Professor Sunstein is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. He is a prolific writer, who has written over 40 books, and hundreds of articles, including the international bestseller and essential introduction to behavioral science, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008).

He is a recipient of the Holberg Prize, which is bestowed by the Government of Norway. The Holberg Prize is recognized as a counterpart to the Nobel Prize for unparalleled contributions to scholarship in the humanities or the law. Sunstein is currently the Chair of the WHO technical advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health, and he advises the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and countries around the world on issues of law and public policy.

He was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2009 to 2012; subsequently, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. He is now working on a variety of projects involving the regulatory state, “sludge,” fake news, and freedom of speech.

In the episode, we discuss: