Introducing Andrew Zuckerman, QRI’s New Executive Director

I have the great pleasure and honor of introducing QRI’s new Executive Director, Andrew Zuckerman. These past years have seen QRI grow from a small informal research collective to a world-class research center for consciousness, and with growth comes new challenges and opportunities. I’m fully convinced Zuck has the mind, character, and heart to lead QRI as we grow and interface with the larger world. This arrangement will once again free me up for the deep work that has created the most value for QRI in the past.

I’ve always envisioned QRI as a vehicle for three things: germinating and exploring a new science of consciousness, leveraging research insights to concretely improve health and well-being, and grappling with grand questions about how to best optimize the universe. People taking all three questions seriously tend to be uniquely interesting people, and it’s been a great pleasure to co-create QRI with the rest of the executive team.

Speaking plainly: we originally brought Zuck in to create an explainer video for our mission, and after the first week of meeting him, I was sure he would do an amazing job. After the second week of meeting him, I had a nagging feeling that we were wasting Zuck’s leadership potential by pigeonholing him into video making, no matter how good it might turn out. And after the third week, I had in fact picked him out as future Executive Director for QRI—he just didn’t know it yet. Over the past two years Zuck has increasingly helped shoulder executive responsibilities, and today marks the formal announcement of that shift. We’re all incredibly proud to have him, and speaking from the heart, Zuck has my complete trust, confidence, and support.