Anu Gupta is an award-winning author, speaker, lawyer, educator, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology, neuroscience, leadership development, contemplative practice, and social entrepreneurship. He is the author of Breaking Bias (2024), with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, which offers a science-backed, compassion-centered approach to reducing bias and cultivating belonging.

Over the past decade, Anu has trained more than 100,000 professionals across business, healthcare, education, law, philanthropy, and government through Be More with Anu. His work helps leaders and institutions address the root causes of bias, polarization, and burnout by integrating attention training, nervous-system regulation, and prosocial behavior into decision-making and organizational culture. His clients and partners include organizations such as Google, HSBC UK, and the American Medical Association, among many others.

Anu’s path to this work is deeply personal. As a gay immigrant of color, he came to the study of bias after nearly ending his life due to the cumulative effects of racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. The realization that bias is learned and can be unlearned helped lead him out of that dark point and inspired a lifelong mission to build a global movement for social healing based on principles of mindfulness, compassion, and shared humanity.

Trained as a lawyer and social scientist at NYU and the University of Cambridge, Anu brings analytical rigor to challenges often treated as purely ideological. He is an Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity and a Lifetime Fellow of the Mind & Life Institute.

A peer-reviewed author, his original research has been supported by competitive grants from the National Science Foundation, Pop Culture Collaborative, American Heart Association, New York State Health Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Focus for Health, and Echoing Green. He has lived, studied, and worked globally, informing his perspective on how different forms of bias—whether rooted in race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or class—share common neural mechanisms that produce inequity across cultural and organizational contexts.

Anu is a longtime student of Buddhism and Self Realization Fellowship, with more than 10,000 hours of silent retreat practice in meditation communities across the United States and Asia. He is a 500-hour certified yoga and meditation teacher and has served on the boards of numerous nonprofits and social enterprises, bringing contemplative insight into governance, leadership, and social impact.

Anu has spoken at leading global forums including TED, SXSW, and the Dubai Future Forum, and his work has been featured in outlets such as TIME, Fast Company, Newsweek, Inc., People, and Vogue Business, as well as on the Oprah Conversation.

Today, Anu is focused on reimagining belonging beyond DEI and leadership development by going deeper toward what he calls soul force: the inner capacity to meet complexity, division, and change with clarity, compassion, and courage. Drawing on modern science alongside Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu wisdom traditions, his work emphasizes that lasting transformation requires both inner development and systemic change.

Anu writes and teaches through his Substack, Soul Force for the 21st Century, where he explores belonging beyond DEI through science, spiritual wisdom, and lived practice. He invites readers, leaders, and changemakers to stay in conversation with him there, and to connect on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Together, he knows that we have the capacity to build futures where all beings belong in the fullness of our diversity.