Talya Miron-Shatz
Customers do not behave the way product, marketing and strategy decks assume they will. They misread information, default to inertia, and disengage at exactly the moments organisations most need them to act. Closing that gap between what behaviour the business model requires and what cognition actually delivers is the work.
Talya Miron-Shatz is a behavioural scientist who shows commercial and healthcare leaders how to design products, communications and customer experiences around how people actually decide.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Talya Miron-Shatz
- Trained directly under Daniel Kahneman at Princeton, with a research output of more than 60 peer-reviewed papers anchoring every commercial recommendation in published evidence.
- Translates behavioural science into specific design decisions on consent forms, patient journeys, adherence programmes and customer communications, not abstract nudges.
- Operating credibility with global pharma and consumer brands including Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, BMS, AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim and Samsung, where she has worked on advisory boards, customer outreach and behaviour-change programmes.
- Author of Your Life Depends on It (Basic Books, 2021), a book-length argument for why even motivated customers fail to act on the information they are given, and what producers of products and information can do about it.
Biography highlights
- Full Professor, Ono Academic College, Faculty of Business Administration.
- Visiting Researcher, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, University of Cambridge.
- Postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University with Daniel Kahneman; former adjunct lecturer in consumer behaviour at the Wharton School.
- Author of Your Life Depends on It (Basic Books, 2021); over 60 peer-reviewed publications on decision-making and behaviour change.
- CEO of CureMyWay, advising pharmaceutical companies, insurers and digital health firms on patient and customer behaviour.
- Senior Fellow, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, New York.
Biography
Most customer decisions are not made the way product strategy assumes. People skim consent forms, default to inaction, misread probabilities and disengage at the precise points a business model depends on them showing up. Closing that gap is the practical job of behavioural science in commercial settings, and it is the question Talya Miron-Shatz has spent two decades answering.
Her research training came from inside the field that defined the question. After a PhD in psychology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she spent four years at Princeton as a postdoctoral fellow under Daniel Kahneman, then taught consumer behaviour at the Wharton School. She is now a full professor at Ono Academic College and a visiting researcher at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge, with more than 60 peer-reviewed publications on decision-making, risk communication and patient comprehension.
The applied work matters as much as the academic record. As CEO of CureMyWay she has advised Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, BMS, AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim and Samsung on how to design products, communications and customer pathways that line up with how people actually process information. Her 2021 book Your Life Depends on It (Basic Books) sets out the underlying argument: even highly motivated customers fail to act when the choice architecture is wrong, and the responsibility sits with the organisation that designed it.
What this gives a leadership team is a behavioural lens with operating teeth. Pricing, product, marketing and customer experience decisions get tested against published evidence on attention, comprehension and choice, and the recommendations come back as specific design changes a team can ship.
Key speaking topics
- Behavioural economics in commercial decision-making
- Choice architecture and customer experience
- Risk communication and information design
- Patient and consumer behaviour in healthcare
- Decision-making under uncertainty
- Behaviour change and adherence
- Wellbeing and the science of life satisfaction
Ideal for
- Pharmaceutical, medtech and health insurance leadership teams designing patient and physician journeys
- CMOs, CX leaders and product heads in regulated consumer markets
- Strategy and innovation teams using behavioural insight to shape pricing, communication and service design
- Boards and executive committees commissioning customer behaviour-change programmes
Audience outcomes
- A working vocabulary for diagnosing where customer decisions break down and why
- Specific design moves to apply to communications, consent flows, choice menus and adherence programmes
- A clear separation between behavioural insight that holds up in published research and the looser claims of the broader nudge industry
- Evidence-based ways to align product, marketing and operations around real customer cognition rather than assumed rationality