Cassandra Vieten, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist, mind-body medicine researcher, author, consultant, and public speaker. She is the Executive Director of the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation which promotes empirical research on fitness, nutrition, and mind-body approaches to foster mental health, and to better prevent and treat mental illness.

Cassi is also Director of Research and Associate Research Scientist at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the University of California, San Diego. The Clarke Center advances understanding of the phenomenon of imagination and its practical applications. We research, enhance, and enact the gift of human imagination by bringing together the inventive power of science and technology, with the critical analysis of the humanities, and the expressive insight of the arts.

Cassi is also co-founder and Clinical Psychology Director at the Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative at UCSD, where a flagship study focuses on psilocybin for phantom limb pain in patients with amputations.

Cassi is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) where she worked for 18 years. She served as CEO/President from 2013-2016 and President from 2016-2019. The mission of IONS is revealing the interconnected nature of reality through scientific exploration and personal discovery, creating a more just and thriving world. In addition to her contributions to the overall mission, vision, strategic direction, financial health, board and staff development, and activities of the organization, she headed up several initiatives including Mindful Motherhood, Living Deeply and the Transformation Project, and the Future of Meditation Research Project.

Her current research projects focus on establishing training guidelines for spiritual and religious competencies for mental health professionals, developing tools and experiences designed to induce perspective shifts that change people’s worldviews, and training progressive change agents and political activists to be more effective.

She is co-chair of the Board of Directors of Partners for Youth Empowerment, Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, and serves on the Board of the Virtual World Society.