Mentalist Superstar Gerard Senehi Knows The Business in Your Mind

TEDGlobal 2012 - June 25 - 29, 2012, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: James Duncan Davidson
TEDGlobal 2012 - June 25 - 29, 2012, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Mentalist Superstar Gerard Senehi Knows The Business in Your Mind

Mentalist superstar Gerard Senehi, motivational speaker, corporate entertainer, and entrepreneur is an amazing person to be around any way you slice it. Recognized internationally as "The Experimentalist," he is also difficult to define and defies all categories, evoking mystery and inspiring audiences to be curious about what they can see and what they don't know. In addition, he is the Founder of The Open Future Institute: The QUESTion Project – a non-profit organization founded to expand the role of education.

Gerard creates a captivating environment where audience members can reimagine their ideas of what's achievable, all the while challenging them to explore possibilities beyond imagined boundaries. Senehi first became inspired by unseen possibilities at the age of 10 when his friends were drawing cards from a deck and he was able to correctly predict three in a row.

Born in Paris and raised in Switzerland, he became even more enamored with the mysteries of the unknown not long after when his mother had a dream one night about a friend of hers accidentally catching herself on fire that then actually occurred. Already fluent in two languages and proficient in two more by the time he came to the United States at the age of 12, Senehi spent hours in his bedroom exploring magic, and mentalism and "becoming fascinated with the things I couldn't understand."

As a student at Amherst College in Massachusetts, he continued entertaining his fellow classmates with impossible feats, however, he did not consider performing professionally until the early 2000s following a career as a science, art teacher, and social worker. While doing nonprofit work friends persuaded him to give show business a try. He began by calling a local New York talent agency which immediately took him on as a client after seeing his act.

Since then, he has been featured on numerous television programs nationally and internationally, including The Today Show and Ellen. New York magazine once referred to Senehi's performances as "some sort of religious experience from the sixteenth century" and he has performed privately for everyone from former President Bill Clinton and legendary TV producer Norman Lear.

Many clients in the corporate world also quickly took notice and he is often invited as the keynote presenter for conferences. They often comment on the near-impossible challenge of surpassing one of Senehi's performances for future events. Deutsche Bank once said: "You were the most talked about the presenter of our entire conference – and we had some of the most renowned thinkers in the world."

In addition, Gerard is also the Founder of Open Future Institute and the QUESTion Project, a non-profit organization he founded with his wife in 2014 dedicated to expanding the role of education to teach a new curriculum that helps high school students define who they are and approach their life and future with inspiration and purpose. The QUESTion Class is being taught in public high schools in New York City and has reached over 12,000 students. Gerard is a graduate of Amherst College and received a Master of Education from the University of Massachusetts. He lives in New York City with his wife, Francesca, and regularly convenes a cross-section of the city's brightest minds in "Evolutionary Salons" to explore questions of human purpose and potential.

(photo credits: experimentalist.com)

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