Inclusive Learning Session: Unconscious Bias

Mollie Teitelbaum (she/her) is an Associate Director on the Learning team at Seramount. She is a DEI Strategist and Instructional Designer who integrates research and storytelling to bring transformational culture change to organizations. She currently serves as an Associate Director on the Learning team at Seramount, where she has developed dozens of new trainings on a wide range of DEI and career development topics. Mollie has created content and facilitated trainings for Seramount conferences and partner events for clients across a wide variety of industries, with audiences ranging from the entry level through the C-suite.

Mollie began her career as a researcher and speaker on topics that lie at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, with a focus on building accountability, mitigating bias, and leveraging habit science. Her skills center on translating cutting-edge research into education and trainings for adult learners.

Mollie has wide experience applying her research and storytelling skills to craft blogs, white papers, e-courses, and insight papers for organizations in mental health care and DEI spaces and has also given a TEDx talk on mitigating harmful social biases.

To mitigate bias, she has leveraged social media to disseminate original as well as curated resources, which have been adopted by educational and corporate institutions. Her popular 2020 Mindful magazine article, “5 Mindful Habits to Fight Bias Every Day,” draws largely from her graduate research grounded in scientific literatures on mindfulness, emotional management, and behavior change. Additional publications include a thought piece in Psychology Today and a co-authored philosophical article in Springer.

Mollie is a graduate of Binghamton University and received her MA in Bioethics at the NYU College of Global Public Health. Mollie resides in Brooklyn, where she enjoys queer community-building, bouldering at her neighborhood climbing gym, and supporting local artists and musicians. Her proudest role is as an auntie to her seven nieces and nephews.

Dr. Shyama Venkateswar is the Senior Director, Learning Solutions, at Seramount. She heads up the development and design of tailored corporate strategies to tackle complex workplace culture and talent challenges and serves as an Advisor to Seramount’s partners representing a variety of industries. She has more than 20 years of experience in applying research for improved outcomes in organizations and public policy.

Shyama was previously the Director of the Public Policy Program and a faculty member at Hunter College, City University of New York. There, she led the expansion and governance of the program, crafted innovative curriculum, and played an instrumental role in implementing campus-wide initiatives for student and faculty success.

Shyama has wide experience in speaking to a variety of audiences – corporate, academic, nonprofit, and government – within and outside the U.S. She has written opinion pieces on a range of global policy issues and has been interviewed for her expertise by print and broadcast media.

She is a graduate of Smith College and received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.