Neil Seeman is co-founder and CEO of Sutherland House Experts. He is also an author, educator, essayist, lawyer, and mental health advocate. 


At the University of Toronto, he teaches at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and is a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME), The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, Massey College, and the Investigative Journalism Bureau.


Neil is also an academic advisor to the Health Informatics, Visualization, and Equity (HIVE) Lab at the University of Toronto. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the U of T’s School of Continuing Studies.


He is a regular contributor to Nikkei Asia, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Healthcare Quarterly and other publications. He is the founder and former CEO of RIWI, a publicly traded Big Data company. He was a founding editorial board member of the National Post and co-founder of the Health Strategy Innovation Cell.


Neil has published his research on mental health topics in Nature, Synapse, and in other leading academic journals. He is the co-author of three books on mental health, including XXL: Obesity and the Limits of Shame, which was a finalist for the Donner Book Prize and was selected as an “outstanding” title by the University Press Books Committee.


He is the author, most recently, of Accelerated Minds: Unlocking the Fascinating, Inspiring, and Often Destructive Impulses that Drive the Entrepreneurial Brain, published by Sutherland House Books. Neil’s book has been declared a “must-read” for 2023 by The Next Big Idea Club, a list curated by Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink.


Seeman is a graduate of the University of Toronto Law School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He lives in Toronto and works with compassionate people to try to understand morality and virtue in current times.


Enlightening Readers & Empowering Experts


Are you an entrepreneurial-minded writer?

Learn how Neil and his team at Sutherland House Experts are on a mission to change the publishing industry.

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Accelerated Minds:

Unlocking the Fascinating, Inspiring, and Often Destructive Impulses that Drive the Entrepreneurial Brain


Why are some people compelled to take big risks on big ideas, attempting to change a market or, indeed, the world in ways that others find delusional? And why do they keep trying, again and again, often after repeated failures and at great personal expense?


Neil Seeman is one of those people: an internet entrepreneur steeped in North American start-up culture. He is also the son of one of Canada’s most important brain scientists.


Drawing on his own business experience and his father’s research into the brain’s processing of risk and reward, Seeman explains the entrepreneurial mindset -the world’s primary wealth creation engine- is in fact a form of addiction.


The highs experienced by individuals when they are solving problems or making breakthroughs are so enormously generative and exciting, and the lows so tormenting and debilitating, that they live on an unsustainable hamster wheel of constant striving and often wind up destroying the very things that they helped create.


With compassion and deep insight, he suggests ways in which the vital energies of the entrepreneurial class can be directed in a more constructive and sustainable manner.

Accelerated Minds Book Cover

Recent Media Essays

National Post


"Time-tested wisdom from Leo Strauss on the persecution of Jews"



by Neil Seeman

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National Post


"German vice-chancellor's speech on antisemitism among the greatest in history"

by Neil Seeman

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Ivey Business Journal


“Why Entrepreneurship Is Entrepreneurship”

by Neil Seeman

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The Times of Israel


“Anne Frank, Genocide, and Contranyms”

by Neil Seeman

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National Post


“Anne Frank and us”

by Neil Seeman

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Financial Post


"Opinion: Plato’s advice to discontented workers: At least be virtuous"

by Neil Seeman

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Reflections


Neil Seeman’s past musings on entrepreneurship published in the media. 

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