Maureen McCarthy’s life is a wild story. She was told she would die young of a rare, genetic lung disease, and with no cure in sight, she couldn't change her body, so she set out to change her brain.With intense chronic pain, an allergy to all pain medicine, and 10% lung capacity, Maureen has been on oxygen for a third of her life. Paying attention to what made it harder to live in her body, she began to question the very architecture of our human experience: the much lauded Problem-Solution Mindset. Relating to her health as a problem was killing her faster than the lung disease.Rather than a problem, Maureen sees death and illness as an opportunity to question the nature of our brain’s relationship to pain and fear. This propelled her to design a radical, brain-based approach to being alive, using the neural circuitry of social connection to harness group stress and build trust in fast-paced environments.Maureen is the Co-Founder of the Center for Collaborative Awareness. She has worked with individuals and organizations worldwide using her co-created collaboration design document, The Blueprint of We™; the Collaborative Desire-Invention Model™, an upgrade to old school problem-solution thinking; and Micro-Dosing Other People™, a tool used to harness stress as a design tool for building resiliency and connection.Through dynamic keynote speaking and global leadership consulting, Maureen has worked with organizations from Dropbox to the World Relief Organization to create vibrant leaders and inspire new ways of working. She is the co-author, with Co-Founder Zelle Nelson, of the upcoming book Collaborate or Die: A Radical Approach to Relationship Design. Maureen’s rare approach to life and unbelievable energy enlightens and inspires audiences to see themselves and the world with a new set of eyes.