Where company culture and compassion collide

Parneet Pal says that becoming a doctor was her “destiny.”

A Harvard and Columbia-trained physician working in the fields of lifestyle medicine, technology, and behavior change, Pal has made strides for her work analyzing the connections between human health, business leadership, and planetary well-being.

Originally from Bombay, India, where her schooling in the medical field began at age 17, Pal’s interest in sports medicine is what initially drew her to pursue a master’s degree in exercise and movement science at the UO.

After graduating, Pal decided to shift her career focus from clinical practice to chronic disease prevention. She realized the impact that a more generalized application could have. On this new journey, the workplace became Pal’s new laboratory.

“I realized that the place where we spend most of our days is at work, and so this idea of how I could help people stay well in the workplace became intriguing for me,” she says.

She notes that a recent study by Cigna, a global health insurance company, solidified her focus to include less traditional and more preventative aspects of health. The study cites that 61 percent of Americans reported feeling lonely and had few, if any, people to turn to.

 

“Loneliness has a huge impact on our health and well-being. It puts you at greater risk for developing depression, dementia, and chronic lifestyle-related diseases.”

“That’s really interesting, because loneliness has a huge impact on our health and well-being,” Pal says. “It puts you at greater risk for developing depression, dementia, and chronic lifestyle-related diseases. But from a workplace perspective, being lonely has a huge impact not only on our productivity, but also our creativity. As much as $300 billion a year goes toward the treatment of stress and related disorders in the workplace, so it’s obviously a huge issue for employers.”

With the goal of achieving a more compassionate, equitable society where “health is the default”, Pal serves as the chief science officer for Wisdom Labs and focuses on solving stress, burnout, and loneliness in the workplace. A large part of her position is meeting with people at Fortune 500 companies, business schools, and global conferences to advocate for organization-wide mindfulness, resilience, and compassion practices.

Why these three in particular? Pal says developing them is crucial because everything about human behavior is connected and consequential. Besides the extra benefits of a longer life, more resistance to illness, and better overall relationships, Pal outlines how these three traits cause a snowball effect of positive impact in the workplace and beyond.

“From a more work-oriented or leadership standpoint, these traits help you to strengthen your attention, which has a huge impact on your creativity,” she says. “It strengthens your ability to regulate your emotions, which means that you're able to communicate and collaborate with others more effectively, and it also boosts your levels of empathy, so your ability to give back and serve others is heightened.” 

With the pandemic resulting in nation-wide labor shortages and overall reports of increased anxiety or depression disorder among adults, according to a report done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, her work is now more important than ever. 

“It's really hard to be surrounded with all of the stress and suffering and then have the energy or the motivation to do something about it, whether for your own self or for others,” Pal says. “I think it's especially important for all of us now to be developing these skills of mindfulness and compassion instead of getting emotionally distressed. You have the capacity to take a breath, to pause, and to get curious.”

Tune in to the “Duck Stops Here” podcast to learn more about Pal's recommended techniques to use day-to-day. 

Pal believes that people recognizing the complexity of issues and developing mindfulness, resilience, and compassion skills will lead to greater external changes and hopes that her research will help give others the “energy and insight” to solve larger world issues.

Pal uses the food system as one example of practicing curiosity and learning about interconnectedness. Food gives us the energy we need to live, but the quality of food depends on the soil, which has deteriorated because of poor industrial and agricultural practices worldwide. She notes that food has an “astronomical effect” on our ecosystems, resulting in 70% of the biodiversity loss on land and 50% of the loss on water and food production also contributes to greenhouse emissions.

“I think right now we all have to collectively think about how we create these systems of support,” she says. “Behavior change is hard. It takes a village and we need to start thinking about how we can change policy.”

So, what comes next? For Pal, it’s about educating the next generation of thinkers using the skills that she learned during her time at the UO. 

“I’ve found that I have carried a kind of teaching thread throughout everything else that I’ve done in my career to this day. That is the activity that I really enjoy the most. I find it really impactful and fulfilling, and have that teaching assistantship to thank for it,” she says. 

To current students and recent grads, she encourages them to transform fears of uncertainty about the future into ideas of possibility, and do what she did: “figure out that juicy problem that makes your hair stand up on end or makes you want to take action, to go out there and make a difference.” 

“It will take all of your mindfulness, resiliency, and compassion, but it will be worth it.”

- By Sage Kiernan-Sherrow, UOAA communications student associate