Hi. I’m Ellen.

I grew up in an Eichler neighborhood in San Jose, CA, where I was able to ride my Schwinn Hollywood anywhere I wished and could spend endless hours exploring the orchards surrounding the neighborhood. What we now call “boredom” was my best friend. Unstructured time let me do what I felt like doing and learn from the natural world around me. I was obsessed with birds and bugs and all but memorized the few but beloved nature books nestled on my bedroom bookshelf.

School confused me. It seemed more about grades than about learning, about stuffing my creative inclinations and natural curiosity into a small box where it could be compared to other kids’ boxes. I literally rebelled against doing grammar diagrams. Why reduce writing – something I loved – into something so dull and mechanical? This nearly got me suspended from 5th grade. I was saved when a teacher entered one of my stories in an 8th grade competition. I won.

Only a few from my all-girl high school class went on to college. Glad that’s changed. I was torn between art, language, and biology. I tried to fit them together yet ended up completing a degree combining International Business with World Studies, language, and Art History. I couldn’t understand why the realms of business and art seemed divided, polarized to against one another. To me they were all part of human nature, culture, and decision-making.

I’d never heard of “Apple Computer” yet I’d sent in my resume for a job posted in the San José Mercury News. The rejection letter arrived in an envelope with a six-color image of an apple with a bite missing. The moment I saw it I knew this was a company that “got” the connection between art and business. I still remember the phone number I dialed. I told the recruiter she’d made a mistake. Two weeks later I was hired: “Intercontinental Communications Specialist.”

It was all learning, all the time in those early days. And an amazing assembly of people; many remain friends. As the Mac launch approached I became a Product Manager for accessory products: global keyboards, modems, printers, all the add-ons. In 1985 I said “yes” to a new role: User Evangelist. Within a month our customers had introduced me to the proto-internet they were using to share resources. It was the obvious and only thing to do: I brought Apple online.

Everybody wanted what Apple had. Or so they said. I’d get called in to help big organizations enter the digital world – and get shut down again and again. It made no sense that so many “leaders” talked the “innovation” talk yet resisted the walk. The frustration became a gift: it got me studying neuroscience in an attempt to figure the confusion out. Before long I knew I’d found my true passion: understanding the brain and the often perplexing behavior it drives.

Raising my sons in Silicon Valley during times of tech-induced change: it was impossible NOT to see the tradeoffs and unintended consequences of what our full-throttle adoption of tech was generating. Contrasting the easy pace and open possibilities of my childhood with the increasingly high-pressure, high-stakes world taking shape around me tuned my radar to the tradeoffs. This all mapped to neuroscience. Our changing reality was changing our brains.

Mapping increases in tech use to shifts in mental wellness and societal structures: neuroscience made that easy, explainable, and concerning. Speaking about it at TEDx Berkeley was a big step for me. Yet it opened up a whole new understanding of how our increasing use of left hemispheric functions somehow disrupted natural patterns of attention, emotional regulation, and social connection. I’ll revisit that talk in a future episode. So much has changed since then.

The TEDx talk led to an opportunity to write a book about the neuroscience of happiness, “The Happiness Hack,” which became a psychology bestseller and gained a few “top 10” shoutouts in the year it was published. Yet by the time it hit bookstores so much of what it forewarned was already part of everyday life. Although I continued to work in tech (Google, product strategy, startups), increasingly I “began with the brain” as I tried to make sense of all around me.

I’d always been interested in the hemispheres of the brain – maybe my early confusion about what school and business seemed to value (definite answers, linear pursuits, categorization, “being right”) and the rich ambiguity of more creative pursuits – and I leaned in to this inquiry at Stanford. My class guided technical students and professionals to re-activate their innate creativity. The results were surprising and change-making, as were the design outcomes.

Navigating various tech Bubbles (and bursts) deepened my concern with the impact of tech on the people who used what it produced. Our wellness, connections, even the ways we used our brains: I saw how powerfully individual and shared attention was shaped by tech and all that came with it. My work let me witness, learn from, and speak about this worldwide. The concept of “rebalancing” the brain inspires me. It’s the fuel behind my podcast, The Brain and Beyond.

“What’s gotten us here will never get us there.” I felt pulled toward a deeper “there” and knew it was time for change of place and priorities. 2022 was a year of learning, from structured programs, personal pursuits, conversations with global audiences I spoke to and with, and a new way of listening to history, evolutionary biology, and differences between timeless and modern cultures. All of that leads to the creation of this podcast and the topics it explores. And beyond.