A Moment with Clare Purvis is part of our interview series featuring thought leaders in research and healthcare. Each interview includes 7 short and stimulating questions.

Dr. Clare Purvis is a licensed clinical psychologist and Director of Behavioral Science at Headspace. Her work is focused on using technology to support people in living full and vital lives. Dr. Purvis is an expert in the design and evaluation of digital mental health interventions. For more from Dr. Purvis, find her on LinkedIn.


1. Tell us something we don’t know. (Anything!)

I can write with my feet.

2. Which fiction book would you recommend to researchers and innovators in healthcare, and why?

Reading fiction is such an important way to cultivate curiosity and shift our perspective. Reading literature and poetry can help spark our own creative thinking as researchers and innovators, and I believe that’s where our best ideas come from.

I recently read Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2013 book The Signature of All Things, a sweeping historical fiction about a 19th century female amateur scientist and naturalist. I learned a lot about botany! And I appreciated how the narrative explored the ways in which culture and gender have shaped the history of science. Would recommend.

3. What are you working on right now that you’re excited about?

At Headspace, I’m helping to build our company’s behavioral science “muscles.” It’s exciting to be at an organization where scientific rigor and creative excellence live side-by-side. I have an incredible team that I’m honored to work with each day. We’re building new processes to bring behavioral science into the day-to-day operations of the company, at scale. My team gets to tackle sticky problems with our cross-functional colleagues, in service of creating delightful experiences that help our members (and ourselves!) create and sustain behaviors that lead to greater health and happiness.

4. Who’s doing something that you admire in healthcare today, and why is it so cool?

André Blackman at OnBoard Health. André is an authentic, whole-hearted leader whose work is dedicated to building a future of inclusive leadership in healthcare. This work is critically important — we can’t create true innovation in healthcare without diverse, inclusive, representative leadership.

5. What’s the biggest barrier to getting things done in your line of work?

There’s never enough time in the day! And also patriarchy.

6. Imagine you win an award for impacting healthcare. What did you do?

I was part of a team that contributed to fundamental, systemic improvement in mental health in this country. I played a role in developing, evaluating, and scaling systems of behavior change that supported people in living full and vital lives. As a result, we all came a step closer to experiencing an integrated culture of health that equally values biological, psychological, and social factors.

7. What advice would you give innovators in healthcare?

Spend 10x more time understanding the problem than you spend imagining the solution. Check your assumptions. Use data. Ask more questions.

You can create change within the system, but also keep trying to change the system.


About Clare Purvis:

Dr. Clare Purvis is a licensed clinical psychologist and Director of Behavioral Science at Headspace. Her work is focused on using technology to support people in living full and vital lives. Dr. Purvis is an expert in the design and evaluation of digital mental health interventions. At Headspace, Dr. Purvis leads the Science team, which is responsible for integrating behavioral science into company operations at scale and partnering with external researchers to advance the science of digitally-delivered mindfulness meditation. She also leads clinical strategy and service delivery for Headspace Health, a subsidiary digital health business supporting people living with chronic illnesses. Prior to joining Headspace, Dr. Purvis led clinical product innovation at Lantern, a venture-backed digital mental health startup.

In 2017, Dr. Purvis founded the Women Entrepreneurs and Leaders Lab (WELL), the first organization dedicated to supporting women scientists in digital health. WELL supports women clinicians and scientists at all stages of their careers by providing opportunities to develop deeper connections with peers and mentors in digital health. The leadership team hosts workshops and informal networking events for everyone interested in learning about the clinical side of digital health.

Dr. Purvis completed a postdoctoral fellowship in healthcare design in the Clinical Excellence Research Center (CERC) at Stanford University, where she now serves as an Affiliate Scholar focused on the use of technology to make great healthcare more affordable. She received her BA in Psychology and International Studies from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and her PsyD in Clinical Psychology from the PGSP-Stanford Consortium.

Written by: Aline Holzwarth