Daniel Levitin

Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Haas School of Business

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  • Haas School of Business

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Biography

Haas School of Business

Professor Daniel J. Levitin, Ph.D., FRSC, is a world renowned cognitive neuroscientist, serial entrepreneur, and best-selling author. He is a Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley.

Levitin helped to found an independent record label in 1982, 415 Records, serving as its Vice President for Artists & Repertoire and eventually its President. The label was sold to Sony Music in 1989. He founded an independent production and consulting company, DL Productions, whose client list included every major record label, contributing to albums by artists such as Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder, kd lang, and Steely Dan. Records and CDs to which he contributed have sold in excess of 30 million copies. Levitin then helped to found the first internet music recommendation engine, MoodLogic, which also sold to Sony. In 2013, he was the first academic dean hired at Minerva, a "start-up" university based in San Francisco and which now is fully accredited and among the three most selective universities in the U.S.

He has worked as a consultant on management, data, marketing, and intellectual property for a wide range of companies including Apple Computer, Microsoft, the United States Navy, Booz-Allen Hamilton, Heineken, Sonos, AT&T and Wells Fargo Bank.

He is the author of four consecutive #1 best-selling books that have spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list: This Is Your Brain On Music, The World in Six Songs, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload and A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age. A revised version of that book will be rereleased in March, 2017 under the new title Weaponized Lies: Thinking Critically in the Post-Truth Era.

The Organized Mind was named by Satya Nadella (CEO Microsoft), Marc Hurd (CEO Oracle) and The Wall Street Journal as "best book of the year" for 2014. Its applications to leadership and big data have been praised by CEOs, Supreme Court judges, members of Congress, and Nobel-prize winners. A TED talk based on just four pages of the book reached one million views in its first week of release and now exceeds eight million views, making it one of the most popular TED talks of the year.

Levitin is actively engaged in disseminating science in the public interest, through public speaking and media interviews. He is a frequent guest on NPR, CBC and BBC radio and has appeared on Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, The PBS NewsHour, CNN International, FoxNews, and The Big Bang Theory.

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