James Healy (2003 Graduate)

Tell us about yourself! What did you study during your time with us, and what are you currently doing?

I initially studied a BSc in Philosophy and Economics, but couldn’t cope with the Maths and switched to BSc Philosophy (as it was back then). Afterwards I stayed at LSE for another year, adding an MSc in International History to my Philosophy degree. My career has taken a somewhat improbable trajectory since, with 14 years in operations and project roles in investment banks in London and Singapore, followed by 6 years as a management consultant in Australia, where I founded and globally led Deloitte's Behavioural Science team. I’m now an independent consultant, applying insights from the social and behavioural sciences to help organisations solve complex human problems. I’m also a keynote speaker, an author, and host a podcast called The B-Word, featuring leading academics and practitioners from the world of behavioural science.

In what ways has studying Philosophy influenced your professional life or shaped your career path?

Firstly a caveat: a career is a story you tell with the benefit of hindsight, to make sense of how you got here, to rationalise decisions that were mostly impulsive or lucky or both. (Of course that’s precisely the kind of caveat you add if you studied Philosophy.) You can draw a line back from my behavioural science career to my first encounter with Kahneman and Tversky in the “History of Scientific Revolutions” course and exploring free will, personal identity, and consciousness in various other Philosophy courses. More broadly, my training as a Philosopher helped me become curious, critical, and contrarian, traits which have very much shaped my career.

How has your Philosophy background set you apart in your field or helped you approach challenges differently?

Studying Philosophy teaches you how to think very deeply and critically, about everything, all the time. It took me many years of working before I began to realise how unusual that is. Most non-Philosophers, even exceptionally successful ones, simply don’t have the same curiosity or desire to question everything. At the same time, a surprising number of non-Philosophers struggle with ambiguity, complexity, and contradiction. It’s human nature to seek simple explanations for complex phenomena, but much of the malaise in any sphere of human activity comes from overly simplifying. Studying Philosophy makes you better able to recognise and resist that temptation.

What advice would you give to current or prospective students who are passionate about Philosophy but unsure how it might support their future career?

In a world where a degree costs a lot more than it did a quarter of a century ago, I understand the temptation to study a subject that seems to translate to an obvious career: business, or computing, or accountancy. Such is the pace of change, however, much of what you learn in those fields has a very short shelf-life. By contrast, there’s a timelessness to studying Philosophy; while the answers have changed over the centuries, the core questions have not, because they’re about what it means to be human. Ultimately Philosophy is about questions, not answers. In a world where AI increasingly provides instant answers on tap, asking the right questions is more important than ever.

What’s one of your fondest memories from your time studying with us?

I have particularly fond memories of two of my third year courses. Professor Ned McClennen taught a course called “Morality and Values”, which he interpreted with wild ambition as a 24 week tour of the entirety of western political and moral Philosophy, from Plato to Nietzsche. The reading list was insane. Week 1: Plato’s Republic; week 2: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, etc. But more than any other course, that one set everything we’d learned in our other courses in context, showing us the broad sweep of the evolution of western thought. Similarly, the “History of Scientific Revolutions”, based on Thomas Kuhn’s classic work, gave me a far greater understanding of the History of Science and the titanic figures who shaped it. Together, those two courses made me feel like I’d really earned my Philosophy degree and understood something important about why the world is the way it is.