Eric Potterat, Ph.D. is a newly retired U.S. Navy Commander, who during his last 10 years in the Navy served as the Psychologist for the U.S. Navy SEALS. As their Head Psychologist, he was responsible for the assessment, selection, development, maintenance and enhancement programs for the Nation’s best warriors and highest performers. He was also responsible for the mental toughness and performance psychology training, clinical care, operational readiness/resilience training and neurocognitive evaluation programs for all the active duty personnel across the Navy’s Special Operations Force worldwide. He is considered one of the leading experts in individual and organizational resilience and performance enhancement in high-risk, high-performance occupations. Years of working with and researching these elite performers has allowed him to better understand the science of mental toughness and how many of the same techniques that make elite performers amazingly successful are 100% teachable. This, he now helps individuals and organizations better focus on more effective teamwork principles, performing better under pressure, and the development, maintenance and enhancement of resilience.
For his last 15 of his 20 years in the Navy, he focused his research and practice on stress resilience, personnel selection and development, mental toughness training, and optimizing human performance in extreme environments. He is also credited for developing and implementing the Mental Toughness Training Program for the U.S. Navy SEALs and embedding it into their training pipeline. He has 30 peer-reviewed, professional journal and/or chapter publications, has been featured on national media (History Channel, MSNBC, national magazines, etc.), and has served as a consultant to many organizations including, numerous professional (NFL, MLB, NBA, etc.) and collegiate sports teams, individual professional athletes, Red Bull High Performance, NASA, many Law Enforcement and government agencies, Firefighting organizations, and Fortune 500 corporations. His talks tend to be a mixture of techniques and mindset principles that allow individuals and organizations to thrive and excel in the face of pressure.