While explicit biases and prejudices are on clear display in the world today, unconscious biases remain unseen. Even people with no conscious bias can exhibit unconscious biases against other people based on age, gender, skin color, religion, and so on. And studies have shown that these biases may become more prevalent when we are under stress or multi-tasking, conditions that are prevalent in the modern workplace.

This month I interviewed Anurag Gupta, whose Buddhist practice, global education, and legal work have led him to found BE MORE, an organization devoted to training organizations to eliminate unconscious bias. As well as being the founder and CEO of BE MORE, Anurag is an attorney, an academic researcher, and a mindfulness expert.

Anurag’s work has been showcased on NPR, The New York Post, Dan Harris’s 10% Happier podcast, the Secular Buddhist Association Podcast, and in a TED talk. He was one of the 125 Buddhist leaders who presented President Obama with a Buddhist Statement on Racial Justice at the White House in 2016.

Buddhistdoor Global: Can you tell us about the mission and recent activities of BE MORE?

Anurag Gupta: BE MORE is a movement to infuse health, legal, education, finance, and other systems with principles of compassion and understanding to eradicate unconscious bias from decision-making. Our mission is to unleash human potential by training leaders in different fields in proven tools, such as mindfulness, to hack unconscious bias in decision-making. This is important not only in hiring, retention, and advancement of talent—particularly for people who have been historically stereotyped as less worthy, i.e. people of color and women—but also in the quality of services companies deliver to the global majority, which is non-white and non-male.

For example, in the healthcare industry, it has been reported that darker-skinned patients routinely receive lower doses of pain medication because there is an unconscious belief that dark skin can withstand more pain. The interesting thing is that this happens in split second decisions by providers of all colors, including darker-skinned ones. So the goal is to rewire the brain in how we imagine and relate to humanity in its fullness.