The Business of Brain Health
Dr. Nevin leads the Brainomics™ Venture at Center for BrainHealth and UT Dallas, a multi-disciplinary effort to unlock vast human potential by examining the economic impact of interventions to improve brain health and performance.
When you look at the way neuroscience understands human behavior, there is a tremendous opportunity to improve our micro and macroeconomic approaches. If we can combine forces – economists and neuroscientists – to think about the way people behave, we’ll get much more powerful insights and ultimately a stronger economy and society.
Sarah Hoit is a social entrepreneur, executive, and consultant. In both the private and public sectors, she has founded, led, and served organizations that deliver meaningful social impact.
Currently, Sarah is the chairman of Social Impact Partners, bringing together a consortium of public and private leaders committed to combatting Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative conditions and promoting solutions for brain health and longevity. She is also the founding member of a firm, Every Day Matters, an organization focused on bringing products and services to the market that promote brain health, food as medicine, and longevity. Sarah also works in partnership with the Future Commerce Initiative and to deliver health strategy, leadership development, senior living, and retail health programming to leading organizations worldwide.
Sarah was previously the chief social impact officer for BioVie, Inc., an innovative pharmaceutical company that, through people-centered science, creates groundbreaking innovations to combat diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. From 2007 to 2021, she was the co-founding CEO and chair of Connected Living, Inc., a technology company created to connect an aging population. Connected Living created an accessible, digital, virtual social network for seniors and senior living communities. The network provides a high-tech and high-touch way for seniors and families to connect, access goods and services, and enhance quality of life. The company now serves more than 2000 senior living communities across the United States. During the Covid pandemic, the company became an essential service. In 2021,
Sarah successfully orchestrated the sale of Connected Living to Omega Healthcare Investors. Previously, she was the founding CEO and Chair of Explore, Inc., a technology and services
education company that elevated elementary and middle school students academically and socially through the integration of experiential learning, homework support and skill lessons, physical education, and community service. Earlier, she served as the director of business planning in the White House Office of National Service and as deputy director of AmeriCorps, where she was a senior leader of the national service program that has enabled more than one million youth to serve their country.
Sarah holds a BA with honors from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was awarded a public service fellowship. She has been a guest lecturer on social entrepreneurism at HBS and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, is a strategic adviser to C-Street Advisory Group, and serves on the nonprofit boards of CaringKind, Dementia Friendly America , and Tenacity. She actively serves as chair of Argentum’s Women in Leadership committee, which launched the industry’s first mentorship match program in 2022.
Dr. Harris Eyre works across universities, think tanks, and the private sector as an entrepreneur dedicated to creating awareness, knowledge, skills, and leadership for the brain economy. A Senior Fellow at Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, Dr. Eyre is also an advisor to the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association and the online well-being service Kooth.
His goal is to achieve flourishing economic and national security for communities. He and his colleagues are advancing a global Brain Capital strategy aimed at influencing policy domains, investment planning and the formation of a new venture capital fund. In the brain economy, Brain Capital is paramount to social, emotional and cognitive brain resources. Transitioning to the brain economy is now an acute issue given the advances in neuroscience, the rise of advanced generative AI models that strain our brains, and accelerating societal challenges that stress our brains.
Dr. Eyre is an alumnus of the Forbes 30 Under 30 and the Fulbright Scholar program and an awardee of the EB1A Green Card, an honor typically reserved for Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. He has authored 200+ papers and was the lead editor of the book Convergence Mental Health (Oxford Press).
Campaign Co-Chair, Center for BrainHealth Chief Investment Officer, Tolleson Wealth Management
After a decade as a volunteer, Eric Bennett joined Center for BrainHeath, a University of Texas System organization, as founding executive director of the Brain Performance Institute. Under his direction, BrainHealth programs gained substantially in visibility and credibility within the DFW community. Bennett currently serves as chairman of the center's capital campaign.
A chartered financial analyst (CFA), certified public accountant (CPA) and longstanding member of their advisory board, Bennett has served as chief investment officer at Tolleson Wealth Management since 2017. He began working with John Tolleson’s single-family financial services office in 1998 and co-founded Tolleson Wealth Management a few years later, serving as CEO for their private wealth management division.
Bennett is an executive board member of Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and formerly served on the investment committees for the Baylor University Endowment, the Dallas Symphony Foundation, Communities Foundation of Texas, and on several private boards within the financial, retail and media industries. He also serves as senior fellow and strategic advisor for innovation at Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute.