Vic Strecher of Kumanu: 5 Ways That Businesses Can Help Promote The Mental Wellness Of Their Employees

Find a way to check in on people daily. Ask them how they are doing. Let them know you care and that you’re prepared to support them. Finally, and this one is the most difficult and the piece that is most often missing in wellbeing today — help people discover a greater purpose in their work and lives. So think about this as a continuum that we need to support people in their most basic needs, build daily habits that enable people to show up as their best selves, and then help them discover something bigger and more meaningful.

As a part of my series about the “5 Ways That Businesses Can Help Promote the Mental Wellbeing of Their Employees” I had the pleasure of interviewing Vic Strecher.

Vic Strecher, Ph.D., MPH, is a Professor in the Department of Health Behavior Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and is a renowned innovator, researcher, author, and speaker in the fields of behavior change, digital communication, and wellbeing. In 1997, Vic founded HealthMedia, a digital health and wellness company that was sold to Johnson & Johnson in 2010. More recently, Vic created Kumanu (Maori for “nourish” and “cherish”), a company that uses cutting-edge behavioral and neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and advanced predictive modeling to help people optimize their mental/emotional health and wellbeing. These successful ventures have reached tens of millions of lives. Vic’s latest behavioral, neuroscience, and epidemiologic research; his two books, Life On Purpose and the graphic novel On Purpose; his free online course; and the Purposeful and Resourceful applications his business (Kumanu) has created are aimed at improving human flourishing for all.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory…