Marie Banich, Ph.D.

Marie Banich is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder and one of the world’s leading researchers on executive function — the neural systems that enable us to direct attention, exercise cognitive control, and guide goal-oriented behavior. She is Founding Executive Director of the Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium and Co-Principal Investigator of the Colorado site of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a landmark 10-year national study tracking brain development in over 11,000 youth.

Her research has been published in leading journals including Science, and she is co-author of the widely adopted textbook Cognitive Neuroscience (Cambridge University Press, 5th edition). In 2025, she received the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s Distinguished Career Contributions Award — one of the field’s highest recognitions. She previously served as Editor-in-Chief of Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience and Director of CU Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science.

At Mind Leap Institute, Marie provides the scientific foundation for our frameworks, ensuring that our approach to attention, cognitive control, and human capability in the AI age reflects how the brain actually works.

Bjorn Beam

Bjorn Beam is a geopolitical and technology strategist at Arcano Partners with over a decade of experience in the U.S. intelligence community, including service as a CIA officer and member of the Presidential Daily Briefing Staff. He has briefed senior government leaders on global threats, emerging technologies, and crisis developments, and led operations addressing some of the world’s most complex security challenges.

He is also the author of three books for parents on the digital lives of children, focusing on teen social-media behavior, cyberbullying, and the skills kids need to navigate an increasingly digital world. Today he advises NATO partners, European institutions, and multinational companies on geopolitical risk and the strategic implications of artificial intelligence.

At Mind Leap Institute, Bjorn contributes expertise on how AI is reshaping global competition, helping ensure that human judgment, ethical clarity, and institutional resilience remain central to technological transformation.

Virginia Blaser

Virginia Blaser is a tech entrepreneur, AI inventor, and retired senior U.S. diplomat with more than three decades of global leadership across Africa, Europe, and Latin America. She led billion-dollar operations as acting ambassador to multiple countries and brings deep expertise in consular affairs, crisis management, and high-stakes decision-making.

She is the author of The Manager’s Workbook, which the Foreign Service Journal called “a must read” for leaders. A patent co-inventor and trusted advisor to organizations including LCWINS and Pathfinder International, she combines diplomatic insight with entrepreneurial drive and a commitment to ethical technology.

At Mind Leap Institute, Virginia advises on strategic leadership, government and NGO engagement, and the integration of human wisdom with AI innovation.

Nicholas Morris, M.D.

Nicholas Morris is a psychiatrist with clinical training at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, where he served as Chief Psychiatry Resident. For the past nine years, he has served as a Regional Medical Officer Psychiatrist (RMOP) for the U.S. Department of State, six of those years overseas, providing mental health care to diplomats and their families under high-stress conditions. He previously served as Deputy Medical Director at Maia Institute.

His work focuses on the intersection of mental health, cognition, and human performance — understanding how people think, adapt, and thrive under pressure. At Mind Leap Institute, Nick provides clinical and neuroscience expertise that grounds our frameworks in medical science, ensuring that our approach to AI transformation addresses the full spectrum of human wellbeing, from attention and judgment to stress and resilience.

Jeff Ogren

Jeff Ogren brings over 25 years of international human resources leadership, with deep expertise in developing leaders and organizations across cultural and technological transitions. As Deputy Director of Management Training at the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center — the U.S. government’s premier diplomatic training institution — he led programs reaching 45,000 students per year, a quarter of the Center’s total enrollment. His career has spanned eight countries and multiple regions, managing the intersection of human capability, organizational change, and strategic adaptation in complex, high-stakes environments.

As author of Leading From Day One, Jeff translates leadership theory into practical guidance for those navigating unfamiliar challenges — a perspective directly relevant to leaders entering the AI era. At Mind Leap Institute, Jeff advises on organizational readiness, leadership development, and the human dimensions of technological change.

Brian Razzino, Ph.D.

Brian Razzino is a licensed clinical psychologist with nearly 30 years of experience helping children, families, and adults navigate complex emotional and cognitive challenges. He earned his doctorate from DePaul University and completed his training at Children’s National Medical Center. He served on faculty at both CNMC and George Washington University, teaching graduate and undergraduate students and supervising medical residents and interns.

Specializing in developmental neuropsychology, ADHD, anxiety, and learning differences, he is a trusted voice in national media including CNN Health and Parents Magazine, and author of Awakening the Five Champions: Keys to Success for Every Teen (Razzino & Associates, 2024). At Mind Leap Institute, he advises on the psychological foundations of our frameworks, ensuring our approach to AI transformation is grounded in how people actually learn, change, and grow.

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, Ph.D.

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes is a British-Swedish philosopher of mind specializing in metaphysics, consciousness, and the boundaries of human experience. A lecturer at the University of Exeter, he bridges classical philosophy — particularly Whitehead, Spinoza, and Bergson — with contemporary mind science, psychedelic research, and emerging questions in artificial intelligence. He co-founded the world’s first academic Masters’ courses on psychedelic research at Exeter and authored Noumenautics, Modes of Sentience, and co-edited Bloomsbury’s volume Philosophy and Psychedelics.

Much of his work challenges reductionist accounts of consciousness — work that now takes on new urgency as claims about machine consciousness outpace general understanding. A sought-after speaker who inspired the re-creation of a Marvel superhero, he addresses AI and consciousness at venues including the Superintelligence AI Conference at Exeter. His central concern is that AI leads to the benefit of humanity rather than to its cognitive decline.

As the sole philosopher on the Mind Leap Institute Advisory Board, Peter ensures our work remains grounded in rigorous inquiry about what consciousness actually is, the historical-political context in which we understand consciousness and machines, and where ethical guardrails must be placed at this pivotal moment.

Alex Tsankov

Alex Tsankov is a senior AI and MLOps platform engineer with over a decade of experience building reliable software infrastructure in high-stakes regulated and financial environments. At Bloomberg LP, he is a core contributor to the enterprise LLM gateway powering all customer-facing AI products across Bloomberg Law, Tax, and Government — a system used by more than 40 internal teams and 10,000 customers, with work spanning retrieval-augmented generation, fine-tuning infrastructure, evaluation platforms, and the GPU training infrastructure supporting BloombergGPT. Earlier, he built tools at Chainalysis used by law enforcement to track hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit digital asset activity.

A Computer Science and Philosophy double major from the University of Colorado Boulder, Alex also holds a Master of Public Administration from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, focused on macroeconomics and industrial policy. He led a Columbia master’s team that briefed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on semiconductor supply chain policy, and returned to SIPA as a guest lecturer for AI/LLMs for Future Leaders, translating modern AI systems for the students who will govern them.

As the technical engineer on the Mind Leap Institute Advisory Board, Alex brings the view from inside the machine — grounding our frameworks in how AI systems are actually built, where they fail, and what institutions must understand to deploy them responsibly.