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This is the Executive Connect Podcast - a show for the new generation of leaders. Join us as we discover unconventional leadership strategies not traditionally associated with executive roles. Our guests include upper-level C-Suite executives charting new ways to grow their organizations, successful entrepreneurs changing the way the world does business, and experts and thought leaders from fields outside of Corporate America that can bring new insights into leadership, prosperity, and personal growth - all while connecting on a human level. No one has all the answers - but by building a community of open-minded and engaged leaders we hope to give you the tools you need to help you find your own path to success.
Melissa Aarskaug (00:01.698)
Welcome to the executive connect podcast where we explore the strategies and innovations of leaders and our at wall. I lost start over Welcome to the executive connect podcast where we explore the strategies and innovations that leaders are using to navigate today's complex or workplace today, we're thrilled to have
Nishta with us. She's the head of innovation and digital technologies at Takeda, as well as the president of the Healthcare Business Women's Association, HBA, Mid -Atlantic Chapter. She's a recognized leader in the biopharma and healthcare industries, particularly known for her expertise in AI, digital innovation, and digital health.
Nishta, I'm so excited for you this year. You've received the most influential women leaders shaping the future of healthcare 2024 from CIO Look Magazine. Congratulations and thank you for being with us here today on Executive Connect.
Nishtha Jain (01:16.27)
Thank you, Melissa. First of all, thank you for such a lovely introduction. And it's my pleasure to be here.
Melissa Aarskaug (01:24.3)
I always love to start with just giving us a little bit of a background of you and just how you got into this industry and anything you feel comfortable sharing.
Nishtha Jain (01:38.01)
Sure, so thank you for asking that question. So again, I come originally from India, so I immigrated to United States in 2011 to pursue a master's degree in biotechnology. And prior to moving to United States, I had an engineering in biotechnology. So I have always had.
passion for the industry. And at the time when I had started this degree, it was a very niche field. it wasn't, you we did not know the value of biotechnology until very recently when in 2020, we saw how it was biotechnology that was able to get us vaccines right in the time and in such a such. So I definitely
see that how the industry has evolved and with the emergence of AI and some of these new digital technologies, this industry is ever evolving. So again, I'm very, very passionate about biotechnology and how we could apply some of these new technologies in this industry to solve essentially the problem, which is how do we get the drugs to the market faster?
Melissa Aarskaug (03:00.374)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm so happy to have you here to talk about this. And I know today we're going to talk a little bit about mental and emotional wellness. And I know we're seeing a lot more of it in today since COVID -19 and the pandemic. We've saw it a lot this year during the US Olympics. And a lot of the US athletes were talking a lot about mental and emotional wellness.
I want to get your perspective on mental health challenges in today's workplace and what are some of the really pressing issues that you're seeing that employees are facing today?
Nishtha Jain (03:40.408)
Yeah, so firstly, in today's workplace, as you may have seen, some of the companies have said, OK, come back to the office where people were working remotely. But then there are still a lot of companies that have said, OK, we are in hybrid mode. And what hybrid means is that some days you may go into the office, but then rest of the days, people are still working from home. Again, what I would say and what I've
heard from my employees and from my coworkers and everybody is that the typical mental health challenges that people face is burnout, which typically is resulting from chronic stress and exhaustion from constant work demands and performance pressure. And this is most certainly because of remote work environment and those hybrid environments. In addition,
people are suffering from the general stress and anxiety that has been, you know, exacerbated due to some of the economical uncertainty that's evolving jobs insecurity and the fear of layoffs and downsizing, which we have started seeing in the last one and a half year and has been still emerging. So, yeah, so again, I definitely think a lot has to do with the remote and hybrid.
kind of workplaces that it's not the old workplace, but it's a very different and evolving workplaces now.
Melissa Aarskaug (05:16.898)
Yeah, I do. I absolutely agree with the burnout from chronic stress. I've been taking knee days, right? Something as simple as taking a day off just to run errands, to get out of my head, to go exercise, to see my doctors. They're really important to take those times to decompress, to get away from technology, just to do some things that you have to do in your personal life and really take care of.
yourself and your family and any of your hobbies. So I want to talk a little bit about digital technology and constant connectivity that's contributing to workplace stress. I know like we're constantly on these days, our phones, our computers, our doorbells, our everything's attached to the internet attached to us and our watches, everything. always on 24.
seven and how it really affects our brain and our body.
Nishtha Jain (06:19.118)
Yeah, so definitely the constant influx of emails, notification updates, it's very overwhelming. And it can lead to not only decreased focus, but difficulty in prioritizing what needs to get done and what I would do later. And also, it's just becoming increasingly stressful to manage. And there is also information fatigue, because there's just so much information to process.
And what I hear is back in the day, this used to be what we would process in multiple years. So now in a single day, we process so much information that our ancestors used to process. They used to take many, many years to process the same amount. And then also the technology is constantly changing. the Gen. AI and how fast it's just taking over the industry, there's a
continuous need to learn and adapt to these new technologies. And it's very difficult for those who in general keep up, you know, they struggle to keep up with such technologies. So it's additional source of, you know, that stress and the pressure. And it's potentially, you know, impacting job performance and satisfaction for anybody in the workplace. And, know, overall, there is digital distraction most of the time, because now
as we operate in workplace, there are multiple tools, digital tools that we have open at the same time. And because of the remote nature, sometimes you get pinged on the phone, on the Teams chat, or on the Zoom chat. So depending on how many platform, technology platforms a person is accessing at the moment, it literally is just distraction the whole time. So overall, these are not everything. All these things are
reducing the productivity and increasing the stress level and just making it hard for employees to stay focused.
Melissa Aarskaug (08:24.44)
Yeah, I absolutely agree. You know, and not just your work, your personal life too. If you have social media channels, your own personal emails, all kinds of things inside and outside work. And I know I'm asked a lot when I speak to different groups about how to juggle work -life balance from, you know, in a modern way. A lot of times people are wondering how to do it, how can they do it?
And I think from my perspective, I believe in work -life integration and making it work. And some days we're gonna be not balanced, we're gonna be spending more time with our job and other days we're gonna be spending more time with our family. And so I wanna get your philosophy about balancing mind, body and soul and really talking about this work -life balance.
Is there such a thing? How has it evolved with digital technologies?
Nishtha Jain (09:26.402)
Yeah, so my work -life balance philosophy is, as you said, integration. So my belief is that you cannot pour from an empty cup. So the first thing for anybody is to fill their cup. And then filling their cup is think of three pieces of pie where one is mind, one is your body, and one is your soul.
So if you are not meeting any of those one pieces of pie or you are not pouring into that first, there's no way for you to sort of pour out or give back or give anything to the people. So I believe that finding the balance between those three different factors is sort of key to how somebody can find that sort of work -life balance.
And I definitely would say that when it comes to mind, it's like building the muscle. So all these three can be separated. Think of these as different buckets and how can you build muscle in each area? And we think of mind more as three pieces that I always think of in the mind is self -awareness.
Am I aware of myself? Do I actually know what I'm doing? What do I want? Am I in the right job? So self -awareness, self -regulation, which is where that sort of emotional and like little bit of mental regulation comes in where you are present in the moment and not constantly somewhere else. And then thirdly, for mind, it's self -development, where you have to constantly keep your mind motivated, not just by...
what you are seeing and learning at work, but maybe podcasts like these, know, Ted Talks and some of the other channels and medias that are most accessible. So that is what I would say is the mind bucket. Now for body, you know, again, Amal Asamin, know, firstly, physical activity is super important and with long work hours and not moving at all.
Nishtha Jain (11:39.938)
I think that's definitely something we have to prioritize and say, okay, you know, this is something that's non -negotiable and I have to complete, you know, five to 10K steps. So, that's something, you know, one has to set up their goal as, but then there is nutrition and sleep, which are also equally important when it comes to the body piece, because people actually underestimate the power of eight hour sleep. you know,
Earlier, there used to be a lot of studies where people were used to be like, I sleep five hours and they thought it was cool, but not anymore. So that's changing. Now people and some of the big leaders and CEOs openly talk about that they prioritize their sleep and they are making it to that eight hours. So that's the body element. And then, again, the third element, which is the soul element, which I believe is where
not everybody sort of, you know, is focused on is sort of incorporating that mindfulness and reflection in your day. And it could be through simply just sitting, breathing. It could be through if somebody can, if you can meditate, that's the best way to go. Or, you know, some people really like to journal and they like to connect with, you know, they just like to reflect. So I think, I think those are some of the methods. And then, of course, you know,
Spirituality is another piece to that. So if you have like communities and places where you feel more sense of belonging, so that is that specific element that, you know, one could build on.
Melissa Aarskaug (13:17.27)
Yeah, you're so spot on with mind, body and soul. I love what you said about you can't pour from an empty cup. And that is so spot on because if you have we all have, you know, a certain amount of energy to attack a day. Right. And if that energy, like a gas tank is empty, you're, know, you're not able to function, you're not able to listen, you're not able to understand.
You're maybe short tempered, you're maybe not compassionate, and you really can't bring your best self to anybody if you're on empty like your gas tank is in your car, because your car can't run without gas, just like you can't run without energy. And so you're spot on to be mindful about the energy and where you're putting it and really balancing all the pieces. And there is ways to incorporate it. Like you were saying, exercise.
Absolutely, we gotta move our body when we're sitting at our desk all day. And if you don't have the opportunity to get out and go take an exercise class or go to the gym, get a standing desk and put a treadmill under your desk while you take your meetings or, you know, set up reminders on your phone that says, okay, you know, noon every day, you're gonna do, you know, 20 pushups and 50 sit ups and really hold yourself accountable because it's
It is a priority and the less that you're mindful like you mentioned and the less you pay attention, it really deteriorates your health. And ultimately when you're not servicing yourself, you can't service others. So absolutely mind, body and soul, it's all intertwined. And I wanna talk a little bit about too, I think a lot of times,
at least for me and maybe for you as well. Like I was always traveling, constantly traveling to see clients and driving to see clients or flying to see clients. And I think the beauty of COVID -19 is we're able to do a lot with a phone call or a lot with a team's call. So when you're overworked and you're on E and you got to get on a 5 a plane flight, do you really need to do it? And it's really
Melissa Aarskaug (15:38.538)
stepping back and thinking about the old way that we used to do things, is that the right way? And really creating strategies to improve your work -life balance so you can bring your best self to your job and your goals. So I wanna talk a little bit about actual strategies.
that people can use to really improve their work -life balance and maybe some tips that you can share with our listeners.
Nishtha Jain (16:13.498)
Sure, sure. So I wanna maybe start with first of all, as you were mentioning, do I really need to fly to meet this client, right? So a lot of digital technology, I know we talked about some negative things, but it has a lot of positives, which is for you to be able to manage your schedule. So again, if you don't have to be in a meeting in person, can you just...
handle it virtually and not actually travel. So again, you know, I have tried to keep these three different things. So one is, know, how like daily routine and small habits can actually make a major difference in your and in how you show up for your day. So one thing that I try to do, and you know, I actually heard it from an influencer that I follow is, you know, how would you feel if thousand people would walk into your room?
you know, when you wake up. So think of when we, the first thing we do in the morning is actually simply open our phone and start like surfing social media. That's exactly what we are doing. I think, what I, and this is a very conscious effort that I try to not, you know, access any digital technology or blue light devices 15 minutes before sleeping and 15 minutes after I get up.
from the sleep. which again, you know, it sounds like, really, what would that do? But it is actually really, really helpful because, you know, it allows you to actually wake up and then just like settle down, just reflect and then have that time for yourself for the first 10 minutes of the day before actually touching your phone and starting to, you know, get nonstop because like in past,
the first reaction would be picking up the first thing I would check is the email, right? Like work email. did I receive from last night to now? So I think that is something that I saw has worked for me. And again, I would love to share that it's only 10 minutes or 15 minutes maximum before sleeping and after you wake up, hard habit to build, but possible. And then in the...
Nishtha Jain (18:34.682)
And after that 10 minutes, if you can be like five minutes for that breathing or sort of mindfulness or meditation, again, it's something you know, it's a preference. It's a personal choice. I know some people like to get up and they like to stretch instead of, know, like kind of just breathing and focusing. So whatever works for people. But again, you know, that first 10 minutes and last 10 minutes of the day can actually set the tone for the day really well.
So that's just the part of the hobby that could be changed. Now, the other piece that I sort of implemented during pandemic and which was when I was working remotely a lot and even though I was hybrid employee after a point, but there were days I had no boundary where there was like 6 PM, 7 PM and I'm nonstop going constantly. So again, this was a strategy that
What I did is I joined a health club and that health club is called as Orange Theory. And you know, what they do is basically you sign up for classes and you have a times class. So if I have a class at 6 p and if I don't show up, then I will have to pay exactly the amount of fee that I that they had initially charged me. So basically I'll have to pay double for the class for not showing up. So I signed up for those for 6 p every evening.
So which would mean by 5 .30, I have to stop working. And what happened was after two or three weeks of doing this, I actually somehow was able to manage my time better and wrap up things by that time. So again, initially it was not the part of what I was used to, but I think it somehow worked. just these certain very small things and had major, major impact.
Melissa Aarskaug (20:23.308)
And I think you're spot on scheduling it. And because you're more likely, like you said, to do something if it's scheduled and paid for versus just saying, I'm gonna sign up for a gym and I'm gonna go Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. Well, really you're just out that monthly fee. But if you schedule a massage or a gym class or a trainer, you're actually out more than just that. I think that's spot on. And I think the other thing too is knowing
when you exercise fast. Like for me, I'm an early morning person and I get up and exercise works better for me in the morning than it does at night. At night it's harder to get through it. And so I think it's knowing who you are and when you work best. If you're the kind of person that likes to hit the ground running in the morning and you're tired in the evening, maybe it's a lunchtime for you or a 30 minute break to go catch a quick class or
And it really goes back to what you said, the mindfulness and learning what works. So if you show up to the gym at five and you're on E, you're not gonna get through your workout. You might do, you know, a C level or less effort and you're tired and you leave. then try morning, try lunch, try the weekends. And so I think it really just goes back to what you were saying, understanding the way you work best and giving yourself time.
You know, getting into a routine of going to the gym, you know, X days a week takes time to get yourself programmed and going. So give yourself some grace and give it like a good 90 day college try. And if you make a mistake, try again the next week, because it really is just reprogramming yourself to doing these things. I want to talk a little bit about AI.
AI is the buzzword these days. There's a lot of tools that are being used in this space. So I want to just get your perspective and maybe an overview of AI tools like chat bots, virtual agents, and how AI is currently being utilized to support mental health in the workplace.
Nishtha Jain (22:43.002)
Sure, sure. before I talk about it, Melissa, what I want to share is like a little story of when actually AI was introduced in this mental health space, which very few people might know. So it was originally introduced in actually 1966 by a scientist named Joseph Weisenberg, and he was a German scientist.
he created a mental health psychotherapist bot and the name of the bot was called as Eliza. So Eliza was supposed to emulate a kind of talk therapy where practitioner would often repeat their patient responses back to them. So for example, if you know, a patient said, my boyfriend made me come here, the bot would say, your boyfriend made you come here. So then the next thing would be
the patient would say yes, and then the bot would say, yeah, so tell me more. then what, so Weissenbaum was trying to prove that these boards are really, really bad at understanding complexity of human emotions. But his experiment totally backfired him. And it turns out that people who got access to Eliza were very, enticed by.
listening skills of Eliza because it would say, tell me more, tell me more. And I think they, people really just wanted to share and kind of not get any inputs. you know, what, again, this is a very interesting story and this was like 1966, but then, you know, regardless of that now mental health AI is back on the rise, you know, where, you know, all, a lot of AI systems are like human therapists, so to speak.
are being replaced by AI systems. And essentially, I want to think of people here who do not have access to therapists or people who want this access round the clock. So for them, these kind of bots are actually a game changer because if, I really want to talk to someone which is after 8 PM or 9 PM when officially
Nishtha Jain (24:58.178)
I may not have a physical therapist who would support me. These could work around the clock and really, really help people to get the support that they need. And also, the accessibility of getting to therapists is really not the best in the country. So so definitely now you can see the same concept being back on the rise.
Melissa Aarskaug (25:24.888)
Yeah, and they're using AI to, I've seen a lot of stuff in my scroll recently. AI is detecting and diagnosing mental health conditions earlier than if somebody were, and not just mental health, a lot of other health conditions earlier than they would have if they continue to see a therapist. And you can create these personalized treatment plans, right, for AI.
through AI to people, correct?
Nishtha Jain (25:56.43)
Yes, yes. Yeah, so, know, again, how AI is working is basically it's analyzing people's speech, text behavior. It can detect signs of somebody who's suffering from depression and anxiety or some kind of mental health ailment just by think of their social media post or just by how they are texting. So based on their text, you know, there is a possibility that AI can actually detect that this person doesn't sound
you know, like they are okay, so just by the language of it. So again, you know, by detection of that, again, AI really can help in identification by doctors intervening early in the, you know, early before the person actually is, you know, is needing the help. But then also in the personalized treatment space where, you know, so there is no one size fits all kind of, you know,
mental therapy approach or psychotherapy. When you go to a therapist, they barely spend any time with you. So it's like between that 15 to 30 minutes that they talk to you and then they try to give you medications or therapy based on that. But again, if there is a tool such as AI tools that could continue collecting your data through your smartphones,
and devices and also be able to chat with you in this form. think they can certainly create those personalized treatments for people. overall, and again, I have seen this a lot of time that my Apple watch would say, okay, hi, your heart rate is high, so stop, just take a breath. So again, that's something where if I'm getting stressed out, my Apple watch will let me know. So also,
in addition to this diagnosis, personalized treatment, it certainly is helping people in better mental health management. So again, know, AI is definitely, you know, game changer when it comes to mental health space.
Melissa Aarskaug (27:59.106)
Yeah, think as humans, have blind spots, right? Like a lot of times, you wake up and you're like, I slept plenty and you start your day and you go about your day, but your Apple watch or your order ring says that you maybe slept four hours instead of your eight hours. And so I think it's also this data, right? Giving us the information that we might forget about that we didn't sleep or
You know, we were stressed all day and we're like, I had a really calm day at work, but you look at your metrics and you had a really high stress all day and looking like how are, you know, when you take down your day, what are you doing? Are you, you know, doing something you shouldn't have to work like eating incorrectly or drinking or doing other things? And so I think the data is really important.
because we do have blind spots as people and we just kind of focus on the task and keep going and doing and going and doing. But like you said at the beginning, we're really overloaded, know, cognitive overload, you know, being pinged for all different times at all different, you know, needing all different things at all different times of the night. And I love what you said about like having an AI tool like at eight o 'clock at night because regular therapy sessions are
you know, really eight to five standard hour, like eight to five. If you work from eight to five and you can't get to a therapist until after five, it's hard, right? So having like that flexibility in your schedule and companionship that someone's going to actually listen for more than 15 and 30 minutes is really important because sometimes it takes time for people to get out what they're trying to communicate. And they're not always
really quick to get it all out. And so like you said, they need more than, you know, 15 to 30 minutes to talk about it. So I love the idea of AI powered virtual therapist. Any other like visions that you have for the future integration of AI and mental health and work life balance that we haven't talked about?
Nishtha Jain (30:15.322)
Yeah, yeah, so there are actually definitely, Melissa, one of the things I, so I wanna share some facts and I think this is a very important like sort of Mental Health America report and it shares some of the stats of 2024 as to what's going on in this space. So I just wanna highlight those and then maybe based on those, share some of the future tools that could help us in solving for these problems. So.
So as per the report and I have actually shared the link with you, can certainly share it with the audience. 23 % of adults American adult Americans experience mental health illness in the past year, which actually is around 60 million Americans. And you know, out of which it is one out of every five youth actually is reporting that they have at least one major depressive episode, which is around 3 million youth. So that's 60 million.
you know, in out of out of those three million are youths that are suffering and only 65 % got helped. And then, you know, what people reported is that cost is a significant barrier for them to be accessing the mental health. So every only one in four American actually is able to, you know, access the cost because of the cost. And people have reported that it has just gone up. So I so, you know, when it comes to AI, so think of
as these virtual agents come into play and more tools come into play, they definitely can improve that accessibility, which is a big issue at the moment. And again, when it comes to AI in the future of mental health, again, personalization is what we talked about. There could be this access to the therapy. So.
So that those are two factors. But then the third important thing, which again, and I'm very biased because I come from Pharma and R &D is the better mental health therapy and medicines. So all this data that we are getting is helping in the accelerated research in this industry, because now not only do you have the patient data, but you can get their real world data. You can get their genetic data. And actually you can.
Nishtha Jain (32:38.124)
apply predictions to say, based on all the information I have about you, there is a possibility that you may build up some mental health condition in future. So again, it's definitely something that can help in building these medicines. And as I said, the major challenge in the pharma is getting them faster to the patient, which again is being worked on a broader scale. So again, if we could have a very solid data from the patient in this space, because
This is a space where you don't see anything, right? Like if you have a mental health issue, people don't see it.
Melissa Aarskaug (33:16.268)
Yeah, and I think, you know, another thing too is like you were saying, is there enough providers that can support these numbers? I mean, those are huge numbers that you shared with us, big numbers. you know, they're all, would say, you know, the youth have a very separate need than, you know, people that are professionals that have been working that, you know, have an understanding of who they are when you're, you know, you're
very young and you're teenagers, you're still kind of figuring out who you are. And so I think the other thing is like, these numbers are crazy having, you know, the actual, you know, counselors and these kinds of people available to you through, you know, your insurance providers or even outside of your insurance providers. I see a lot of coaching now people that are, you know,
not using their insurance because they can't get access or they're too expensive going outside of the healthcare industry to private coaches to get the kind of support they need so they can afford it. So I think you're spot on. wanna just kind of, any final thoughts you wanna share with the listeners before we close up that we haven't touched on? I know we covered so much today. Is there anything else you wanna share today?
Nishtha Jain (34:36.566)
Yeah, so I think my final thought would be that obviously AI has a lot of potential to transform mental health support and work -life balance by offering this personalized, efficient, scalable solutions. However, I just want to point this out that there's definitely that careful consideration needed on the privacy and the accessibility issues, which again, there has been a lot of regulation work that's being done in this space.
So again, so that's something to keep in mind that, you know, it's still an evolving space. So what I would maybe say as like call of action for folks would be that, you know, they start to use these daily AI tools in their work life, their work spaces, because, know, and not see them as as their enemy, but see them as their companion, because a lot of these tools and specifically the one around Gen. AI that can help you in
more of content summarization, creation, et cetera, are here to stay. you know, I definitely, that would be my final message, that it's still coming and it's going to evolve. So we should see it more as an opportunity, you know, than as a threat.
Melissa Aarskaug (35:53.518)
Yeah, absolutely. And thank you. I wanna thank you so much for being here today. I know you're very busy and I wanna congratulate you again on your 2024 influential women leaders shaping the future of healthcare. That's a tremendous award and thank you so much for all you do. And again, thank you for being on the Executive Connect podcast.
Nishtha Jain (36:19.812)
Thank you.