Bob Roth, CEO of David Lynch Foundation interview on capital market, alternative and impact investing with Matt Bird at Greenwich Economic Forum (Greenwich, CT)

HIGHLIGHTS

• David Lynch Foundation has served over 1 million children in bringing mindfulness & meditation to deal with stress
• In 2 years, the “Quiet Time” program has shown 86% reduction in student suspensions
• Bob’s students include at-risk students, military vets, women and children

FULL COVERAGE

• Watch complete coverage of the Greenwich Economic Forum

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS: Bob Roth, CEO of David Lynch Foundation with Matt Bird

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 00:00

Welcome back to the Traders Network Show broadcasting worldwide from Greenwich, Connecticut. I’m Matt Bird. We’re here at the 2019 Greenwich Economic Forum. And my next guest is Bob Roth. He’s the chairman of the David Lynch foundation. Bob, welcome to the show. So be our eyes and ears for a minute. We’ve seen a lot of thought leadership going on inside the main forum room. We have the governor, we’ve had the mayor, we’ve had some hedge fund and institutional titans up there. Tell us your takeaway so far.

Bob Roth – CEO, David Lynch Foundation: 00:35

Well I think over the years the term thought leaders has been used, not necessarily accurately. What was most impressive to me is that these are some real thought leaders. There’s some real reflection going on here. What’s the significance of our actions? What’s the impact? Not only today, but you know, generations to come. So I’ve been very, very impressed with the thoughtfulness of our thought leaders.

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 00:52

You know, you mention thoughtfulness. It brings up what you guys do at the David Lynch foundation, which is pretty impressive. So far you’ve serviced about a million children bringing mindfulness and meditation to help mental construct, I would imagine lift them out of the mental construct of poverty.

Bob Roth – CEO, David Lynch Foundation: 01:13

Well, it’s also just to address the epidemic of trauma and toxic stress that’s engulfing, particularly the next generation. It absolutely destroys cognitive capability, brain functioning, health. And so what we’re doing is we’re offering a simple evidence-based meditation technique, transcendental meditation and mindfulness approaches to, as you said, a million kids. And now we also work with veterans. We work with women who are survivors of domestic violence and we’re actually in discussions, we’d like to bring this meditation to a million Syrian refugees.

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 01:44

How do you plan to get there?

Bob Roth – CEO, David Lynch Foundation: 01:45

Well, the thing is, the meditation is so easy. There’s no technology, there’s no buildings, pills. It’s just one person teaching another. So we train enough teachers and then they go and teach the people. And it’s very interesting in today’s modern hyper stressed, hyper traumatic times, an ancient practice, ancient thousands of years old that allows any human being to access quiet equanimity within themselves could actually be more effective scientifically medically speaking then than even any of the pills that the pharmaceutical industry can promote.

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 02:21

Can you give us a couple of your favorite use cases?

Bob Roth – CEO, David Lynch Foundation: 02:24

Yes. For example, what we’re now in Rwanda and Uganda where we’re in schools there and we’re offering the kids start and end each school day with 10 minutes of meditation. And a lot of these children had been severely traumatized and there was research that was done that showed a 90% reduction in symptoms of PTSD for these children.

Bob Roth – CEO, David Lynch Foundation: 02:46

So everything we’re doing is evidence based. This is not woo, this is not like new age hippy stuff. This is science. This is a medical intervention. And here in the United States, in Chicago, they did a study with 2000 kids going to school in the most violent neighborhoods and they wanted to see could there be a reduction in arrests for violent crime? Cause that’s kid gets arrested they’re on their way to prison. Well if you do an intervention and you can reduce your risk by 5%, you’re happy. 70% reduction in arrests, 70%. And now we’re replicating it in schools in New York and in Los Angeles. And I think within five years it’s going to be funded by the federal government to bring stress, reducing meditation to children because what else are we going to do? Give them all pills?

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 03:31

And with the advent of social media it’s fracturing attention spans to me a lot of things that we’d never really anticipated. Our mental makeup of how our brain works is being strained to its maximum.

Bob Roth – CEO, David Lynch Foundation: 03:39

Number two cause of death among teenagers in America is suicide. Suicide! So what are we going to do for those kids? Give them all Valium. No, we have to find non medicinal, noninvasive, inexpensive, sustainable, scalable tools that we can equip children to deal with stress and also wake up their brain. And so tools like transcendental meditation, mindfulness are proving to be that. I’m actually speaking, I’m doing the closing event tomorrow.

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 04:20

You are doing the closing tomorrow and I’m going to grab you again after that. I know you’re stressed for time haha, stressed for time, stretched for a time. Let me ask you, when I was saying why is the Greenwich Economic Forum so important, not just geographically, but from an impact perspective.

Bob Roth – CEO, David Lynch Foundation 04:37

Again, I go back to this thoughtfulness. I get this reflectiveness I get to go back to the idea that meditation and mindfulness is taking off in business and corporate American and organizations. And I think that’s the most hopeful thing because if you can reduce stress, if you can wake up the brain, if you can change a person’s way, they think in a more universal and unifying way. That’s the goals of the UN. It’s a good. Wars begin in the minds of men.

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 05:00

That’s correct. That’s correct. Well said too. All right. Bob. Bob Roth, he is the chairman of the David Lynch foundation and the chief mindful officer of hopefully the economic community. Bob, thanks so much for coming on board. No, thank you. Special thanks to our affiliate partners, ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS. We’ll be right back after these messages. Don’t go away.