Speaker Series with Dr. Cristina Leira
Many of us have been told at some point that we have a lot of potential. Fewer of us have been given a clear answer to the question that follows. Potential for what, exactly, and what happens when it goes unused?
That’s the question at the center of Dr. Cristina Leira’s talk, “The Underused Mind.” Her work looks at what happens when a capable mind doesn’t have anywhere to go — when curiosity outpaces the spaces built to hold it, when intellect becomes something to manage rather than something to live from, and when the gap between who you are and how you’re allowed to show up starts to feel less like a gift and more like a weight.
For a lot of gifted people, that gap is familiar even if it’s never been named. It can show up as restlessness in a life that should feel full. It can show up as a mind that won’t stop generating questions even when the questions aren’t welcome. It can show up as the quiet exhaustion of holding back, again, so as not to seem like too much.
Dr. Leira isn’t offering a simple fix for any of that. What she’s offering is a closer look at the conditions under which an underused mind starts to find its footing again — and what it actually takes to feel at home in your own thinking, your relationships, and the communities you’re part of.
This is a conversation for anyone who has ever felt like their mind was running faster than the life built around it, and wondered what to do about it.
Join us for “The Underused Mind” with Dr. Cristina Leira.
August 22, 2026 at 2 P.M. Central via Zoom — Register Here
About the Speaker
Dr. Leira is a cognitive scientist and applied linguist who studies how exceptionally capable minds encode meaning, make decisions, and perform — and what happens when their environments fail to use them. She holds a PhD in General Psychology and an MA in Applied Linguistics, and for over a decade directed language, culture, and cognitive-readiness training for 3,000 Navy SEAL and Special Boat Unit operators. Her own career spans two continents and half a dozen professional identities, from court interpreter to university professor to Chief Science Officer of an AI-enabled health technology venture. She speaks five languages and lives in the USA.
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