Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist who experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain in 1996. On the afternoon of this rare form of stroke she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. It took eight years for Dr. Taylor to successfully rebuild her brain - from the inside out. In response to the swelling and trauma of the stroke, which placed pressure on her dominant left hemisphere, the functions of her right hemisphere blossomed.

Dr. Taylor is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey and was chosen as one of Time Magazine's “100 Most Influential People in the World for 2008.” In addition, Dr. Taylor was the premiere guest on Oprah's Soul Series webcast and was interviewed by Oprah and Dr. Oz on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

In her medical discipline, her specialty was in the postmortem investigation of the human brain as it relates to schizophrenia and the severe mental illnesses. Because of her brother, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, Dr. Taylor served for three years on the Board of Directors of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and currently serves as President of the Greater Bloomington Affiliate of NAMI in Bloomington, Indiana.

Due to the long term shortage of brain tissue donations for postmortem research, Dr. Taylor travels as the National Spokesperson for the Mentally Ill for the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center (Harvard Brain Bank) located at McLean Hospital.