Ep 72. Due Quach: Supporting First-Generation Collegians with Calm Clarity
"We can't go back, but we can have redemption by helping others who are going through what we experienced."
Due Quach
Due Quach is the founder and CEO of Calm Clarity and author of Calm Clarity: How to Use Science to Rewire Your Brain for Greater Wisdom, Fulfillment and Joy. Due was a refugee from Vietnam, a graduate of Harvard College and also of the Wharton MBA program (Class of 2006). She overcame the long-term effects of poverty and trauma by turning to neuroscience and meditation. After building a successful international business career in management consulting and private equity investments, she studied various contemplative traditions in India and other parts of Asia to create the Calm Clarity Program, which makes mindful leadership accessible to people of all backgrounds. She now leads Calm Clarity workshops in inner-city high schools, university lecture halls, and corporate executive board rooms alike. Due is also the founding chair and executive director of the Collective Success Network, a nonprofit that supports low-income, first-generation college students in achieving their academic, personal, and professional aspirations by connecting them with mentor role-models.
Stew and Due discuss the burgeoning research on meditation, calming the mind, and the brain. And they explore how calming techniques affect us at work and in the rest of our lives. Due shares her riveting, harrowing story of climbing out of poverty and deprivation, feeling out of place at Harvard, not knowing how to manage success, learning how the brain reacts to trauma and privation, and discovering how to calm her own brain and find clarity. They talk about her mission to help others find a path from deprivation to success through a mentoring network she’s building and her teaching a practical method for how to gain calm clarity and the strength to persevere.
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