Dr. Neal Mayerson
Neal H. Mayerson received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Utah. His specialties were chronic pain, eating disorders, and couples therapy. He worked in hospital, community mental health and private practice settings for 15 years. Dr. Mayerson has served as president of the Mayerson Family Foundation, a private family foundation, and president of The Mayerson Company, a real estate investment and management company since 1992. He is a co-founder of Hummingbird Coaching Services, a pioneer in the delivery of online personalized health coaching services. This company’s success led to its purchase by Humana – a large insurance provider.
Neal’s entrepreneurship includes the founding of a number of non-profit organizations and programs including the first nationwide distance-learning based professional development program for preschool educators, a child advocacy program for treating and preventing child abuse/neglect, a K-12 professional development organization, an innovative university-based philanthropy education program, a community-wide high school service learning program, and the Mayerson Child Wellbeing Initiative at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Neal also produced the award winning CD - Hidden Treasures: A Tribute to King Records.
And, he was the first person to introduce hand sanitizers as a consumer product category by introducing the Purell brand to the consumer market. Recently, Neal has published a new book of poems and essays titled Shrink Rap and has released several tracks of original music. He is also the creator of a patented online conversation technology.
In 1999 he collaborated with Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman on the founding of positive psychology, specifically by creating the non-profit VIA Institute on Character. The VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtues along with the VIA Surveys on Character Strengths are considered to be among the most important outputs in positive psychology, having spawned hundreds of scientific articles and tens of millions of people worldwide discovering their character strengths and how to use them to improve their lives and the lives of others.
Watch a presentation by Dr. Neal Mayerson on the importance of understanding and applying character strengths to improve ourselves and our world: A Character Strengths Revolution.
Read an article on the growing research on character strengths and how more research is needed to continue this work studying the core aspects of human goodness: The Character Strengths Response: An Urgent Call to Action.