Pamela Cantor

Activist, Blogger, Brainstormer, Change Agent, Concerned citizen, Connector, Consultant, Doctor, Entrepreneur, Explorer, Foodie, Global soul, Idea generator, Life mentor, Parent, Scientist, Social entrepreneur, Startup, Writer/Editor

I am a physician – I practiced child and adolescent psychiatry for many years – but I was not destined for medical school. I had known significant trauma in my childhood. My life was saved by a person who was the first of many to teach me about trust, healing, growth, the discovery of my own full self and what it could contribute to others and to the world. I’ve learned the most from the children I’ve worked with, and it is they who sparked the subject that has been my passion ever since—how we become who we become. This is why I have founded The Human Potential L.A.B., whose mission is to leverage the latest scientific knowledge and technologies to transform what people understand and what institutions do to unlock human potential in each and every individual. Human Potential Science is a new field that I believe we all have a stake in launching. This is why I am so happy to be coming to TED this year. Most of us live our lives never getting to explore the top of our own developmental range, so we often don’t know what it is—not our capabilities nor even what is encoded in our genomes. And more than that, we don’t realize how much of us is malleable to growth and the emergence of new things, things we never expected. There is a new science, developmental epigenetics, which is making many of the processes through which we discover our potential understandable at the biochemical level.

In the world, I am passionate about science, in particular, the science that explains how the body and the mind work to produce the fullest expression of ourselves. In the home, it is all about how design and exotic meals are a way to bring people together, act on their senses and transform a table into a place where people have experiences that feel as if they were meant to be. In a relationship, it is to have an experience where we will both feel noticed, heard, and eventually, known to each other.

The human relationship is not just an interpersonal event, it is an awesome biological event.

That I have 18 grandchildren, a love for experimental fashion, swing dancing, cooking exotic meals, and being in relationship to people and the world in the deepest most vulnerable way I can.