How does an academic researcher, tech strategist, artist and fashion entrepreneur do it all – not sequentially, but as simultaneous careers and while living with a rare memory condition that is both a curse and a blessing? In this episode, Nima Veiseh explains how everything he does fits together, he cannot operate any other way, and indeed, the parts cannot be separated as he deals with his life challenges and the threads of his work legacy journey. Being good with numbers, he takes an analytic approach to human capital in his research and advisory roles on memory, technology and design.
Nima’s core values are to operate with integrity, with himself and the outside world, to understand how people work best, and to create beauty.
His doctoral research was on human capital after earlier degrees in engineering and economics.Coming from an immigrant family – his parents moved to the U.S. from Iran during the Iranian revolution - he struggles with a view of the immigrant mentality He believes it needs to evolve from the servant mentality that many immigrants seem to hold as hard workers. That can be a trap and they can undersell themselves. He tries to change that with the fashion business Dress Abstract which hires only immigrants in the U.S. who come from cultures worldwide.
Related to this is his belief that empathy can get “hijacked” because it can lead to foregoing the opportunity to grow, to blaze your own path.
His inability to forget anything is a result of what has now been recognized as a mental illness diagnosed in only 50 people so far, Hypothymeism. While a good memory is an asset, storing absolutely everything in one’s mind is definitely a challenge to navigate constantly. Nima is part of a study at the University of California-Irvine. (Listen for more on this.) Time has no meaning for him, and it can sometimes accidentally offend people. For the first 5 years of the symptoms of the disease being triggered, he felt like no human understood and he was really challenged to communicate and reconcile the personal self with the professional self. It is expressed in his painting, for example, which is an explosion of layers of paint.
Nima thinks the biggest transformation we are witnessing now is how mental illness is being regarded as an illness like physical illnesses, to be recognized as such and be spoken openly about and treated without shame.
Clearly, Nima is on a significant work legacy journey to benefit people and organizations way beyond himself and to create beauty.
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Bio
Nima Veiseh is an academic researcher, tech strategist, artist and fashion entrepreneur – plus best-selling author of Markets with Memory: The World’s First Data Science Book on the Hemp and Cannabis Industry. Nima is one of 3 co-founders of the Temporal Abstraction school of art.
Nima’s work on memory, technology and design has been featured across the world, including academic conferences, TED Talks, and Art Basel. He is the Chief Data Advisor for several companies and organizations, focused on utilizing data science and machine learning to push the frontier of infrastructure accountability, pricing theory, visualization, and sustainability. Fascinated by how people and technology can work together to further human well-being, economic progress and business objectives, he uses data-driven analysis and focuses on infrastructure sustainability within healthcare, energy, consumer goods, public institutions, and financial services.
Nima holds degrees from The George Washington University, Georgetown University, Columbia University, and MIT and has received 3 patents.
How to reach Nima Veiseh
Twitter - https://twitter.com/nimaveiseh
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nimatheartist/?hl=en
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nima-veiseh-8b717013