Story, Inspiration, Expertise

About

EXPERTISE

Parneet Pal, MBBS, MS, is a Harvard- and Columbia-trained physician-educator who teaches skills and communicates ideas that advance personal, workplace and planetary health. She is pioneering the idea that health and sustainability are inseparable.

A systems thinker, she translates complex science into easily understood and actionable insights for long-lasting behavior change. Her goal is to make you fall in love with your biology, so that it works for you, your work and the planet.

She works with business teams and global organizations to address workplace stress, burnout, loneliness and sustainability using evidence-based strategies from lifestyle medicine, neuroscience, behavioral science and psychology.

Previously, she designed preventive wellbeing programs for Executive Health (including at the University of California, San Francisco), and led faculty, curriculum and content development as the Chief Science Officer of a health start-up scaling corporate mental wellbeing.

Parneet speaks about the connections between Health, Leadership and Sustainability at global conferences and guest lectures at several universities.

She has been a TEDMED scholar, Harvard Business Review contributor and has been featured on the cover of Mindful Magazine.

In addition to her medical training, she holds a Masters in Exercise and Movement Science from the University of Oregon.

INSPIRATION

Parneet’s perspective is informed by a paradoxical experience of health and wellbeing.

On the one hand, her medical training reinforced her love of human biology and the body’s capacity to heal; on the other hand, she became increasingly disenchanted with the global healthcare system, focused on a narrow mindset of “sick care”.

Health is an emergent property of the systems we live in, and currently our systems are set up for us to fail.

What helped her regain her passion for health was a return to what true “health” means: not just an absence of disease, but complete physical, mental, social and ecological wellbeing. Health doesn’t happen in the doctor’s office; it happens at work, at home, and in public spaces. Every exposure and life-experience (our exposome) interacts with and informs our cellular and mitochondrial metabolism in ways that either improve or deteriorate health.

This is where science and the interdependence of our inner and outer ecologies is so empowering. When we pay attention to our lifestyle, the data show we can prevent up to 80-90 percent of all chronic disease that currently accounts for the majority of our healthcare spend and suffering. It also means we make better moment to moment decisions for our health, work and planet.

An educator at heart, Parneet’s work pivoted from clinical practice to translating, designing and communicating these evidence-based ideas, especially in the workplace, where we spend most of our lives.

She envisions a world with wellbeing for all on a stable planet.