Nathalie has spent over 18 years of learning and writing about the mind and how Dr. Yukio Ishizuka‘s positive mental health approach (a Harvard trained Japanese psychiatrist and her father) transforms personality (see how Lifetrack works and insights on Life Purpose).

After working several years with Dr. Yukio Ishizuka, in 1995 her desire to extend assumptions about healthy human beings to other fields including economics, organizations and international affairs lead her to complete the Master’s program onLaw and Diplomacy, and an MBA.

As a graduate student, Nathalie Ishizuka applied the health concepts (called Lifetrack) to both the firm and the nation-state. A number of Harvard Business School students preferred Ishizuka’s application of Lifetrack concepts to the firm over the assigned reading of The Road Less Traveled. The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School published her working paper dealing with Lifetrack concepts and mediation. Ishizuka’s work on psychology and the GATT (now WTO) resulted in a correspondence with Arthur Dunkel, former head of the World Trade Organization. Her work, “Lessons from Preventive Health to Preventive Diplomacy,” received the attention of former U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali and that of the office of Kofi Annan, winning also the Eisaku Sato Memorial Essay Award from the U.N. University in Tokyo.

Accepted in the Ph.D. program at Berkeley in Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations, she told her professors at Fletcher she would go there to apply an assumption on healthy human beings to Oliver Williamson’s (recipient of 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics) theory of the firm.

It is at Berkeley that she met a new mentor, Dr. Len Duhl, who at the early age of twenty-one, headed Mental Health in the United States.  In May of 1998, the School of Public Health, introducing her to work with the Menninger Foundation, proposed her name for an NIMH fellowship.  “I greatly admire the Menninger brothers, and yet it was too early for such work,” said Ishizuka.  “I came to apply a psychology based on healthy human beings to organizations and economics, but something was missing.  I needed to test models through organizational experience, to go far beyond my conceptual knowledge.”  Greatly admiring Oliver Williamson and Len Duhl, she agonized, but left academia, following the man she loved to Paris and picking up an MBA during her stay.

Enjoying work with innovative individuals, companies, entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists, she founded a small innovative company to teach herself about promoting health through entertainment and technology.  “The idea that inspired me is far too big for me,” says Ishizuka, “but, sometimes things don’t work out for a reason.  Perhaps it will surface elsewhere.”

“I am not an expert in highly specialized fields, but when I lack the answers or the expertise, I am good at finding, meeting, and working with those who do,” says Ishizuka.

My mentors in many fields have taught me much about the human mind, about happiness and how to create innovation across disciplines.  Technology is a tool, not an ends.

By helping individuals enjoy the process of their own creation, she believes she can create far more change than on her own.

Nathalie’s inter-disiplinary approach integrating the psychology of individuals, organizations, and the nation state has lead her to work with individuals from many fields and to receive the George A.Plimpton Fellowship for the study of social, economic and political institutions.

She has created the Positive Mental Health Foundation site to promote quality information on health, happiness and reduction of human suffering.  While the focus of this site is on individual health, applications to other fields can be found in the sectionapplications of a psychology of health.

New Focus Japan Crisis

Her current focus is on the Japan crisis.  (Nathalie), also called Leiko by her Japanese friends, is working on an article with, Dr. Paul Briot, Ph.D. in philosophy and  a Belgian essayist, on using the crisis as an opportunity for positive change.

“I’ve met and worked with brilliant, talented, and profound people in all sectors, says Ishizuka, including my father.  And yet, never an individual that has moved me to put all else aside and to focus. Never an individual as inter-disciplinary, modest, knowledgable and spiritual.   Then again, the Japanese crisis may offer us one of the greatest challenges we have seen in a long time.  And one of the greatest opportunities.”

Past academic interests include applying Lifetrack assumptions about the healthy mind to organizations, nations, Japan, economics, negotiation, crisis management & diplomacy,economic integration, war/crisis/health, international affairs, econometric modeling and the mind, and political science.

Attracted to life, to learning, and to pushing an understanding of the healthy mind further, she believes innovation comes from the cross-road of disciplines.

Nathalie Leiko Ishizuka is married to a French man (who like her mother has no need of theories on happiness), has two children and lives in Brussels, Belgium where she pursues her vocation of writing and teaching a psychology of health.  She works with scientists, engineers and many others in a variety of fields.

Nathalie received her M.B.A. from Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC), M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (administered in cooperation with Harvard), and a B.A. Political Science, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, Amherst College.  She participated in the winter Harvard Law Negotiation Program.  She is a member of SCWBI and enjoys capturing movement in watercolor.

For an excerpt on applying an assumption about healthy human beings to the Nobel Laureate in Economics (2009) read Oliver Williamson’s theory of the firm.

For a lighter read, see her book OTHER based on Health and Happiness for children and parents who dare to be different  www.natsays.com

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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Individuals, Organizations and the Nation State
Nathalie Ishizuka, a Fletcher School graduate, explores an inter-disciplinary approach to integrating the psychology of individuals, organizations, and the nation state.
http://positivementalhealthfoundation.com/about/nathalie-ishizuka/