Open Sea Institute (OSI) was established in 2019, immediately prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic. In a relatively short period of time, the Institute has earned blue-chip formal alliances, including with Rolls Royce RREC.
Founded by Drs. Louis and Denise Joseph, the Institute offers a fresh approach, one that turns mental wellbeing into a strategic asset rather than an afterthought for some of the world’s most influential decision-makers. The founders share their insights on how the elite navigate the changing face of the finance industry and how mental health awareness has become a critical indicator of success or failure among leaders and across various industries.
In the finance community, Open Sea Institute has become a mainstay. Why is that?
Dr. Denise Joseph: After working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and finance professionals during my time in high-dollar fundraising, I developed a facility with the subject matter and players at hand. This facility, along with my disillusion with the current state of play in mental healthcare, inspired my founding of Open Sea Institute.
While we are proud to attract clients from a diverse International professional class to our growing Open Sea Institute community, at the outset, our clients came from the finance community in cities like New York and Palm Beach, where I had established prior networks.
Open Sea Institute has become a mainstay in the finance community because we bridge the gap between psychology and Business outcomes. The overwhelming majority of psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists will have backgrounds and training in mental health. The overwhelming majority of white shoe consultants will have backgrounds and training in business. Coaches may have no formal education whatsoever, and the overwhelming majority will not carry elite professional or educational portfolios in addition to, or in the absence of, expert psychiatry.
We are serial entrepreneurs and private investors ourselves. Though academically and occupationally distinguished, at my urging, Louis and I have eschewed academic and occupational cloister. We have displayed a lifelong adaptability and curiosity that affords us broad knowledge and experience, which is a value-add to our clients. What Open Sea Institute offers, in its diversity, sophistication, and insight, is rare and valuable.
The OSI-type approach transcends traditional forms of coaching, consulting, and therapy. OSI-type methodology is highly adaptive and translates seamlessly from hiring decisions or the upcoming merger to issues surrounding a cheating spouse or substance-dependent child at home.
As I always say, we are not a computer module. We are not an app. We are not an ‘out-of-the-box’, ‘one-size-fits-all’, manualized ‘half-day’, ‘all employee’, or ‘all-hands-on-deck’ set of team-building exercises. We do not utilize trite and corporatized language, concepts, or techniques. There is a reason these programs have experienced resentment en masse. Each and every member of the Open Sea Institute community is a unique individual, and the OSI-type methodology is 100% customized for each and every one of our people, individually or as part of organizations.
Do you think that there is sufficient mental health awareness in the finance community?
Dr. Denise Joseph: As much as I am critical of the quality of the prevailing state of mental health care—of its practitioners, methodology, systemization, etc., I certainly recognize how valuable, effective, and valiant decades of campaigns for mental health awareness have been. The finance sector has not been immune to this generalized cultural awareness. The finance sector is starting to understand the importance of mental health, with more firms trying to cater to mentally struggling employees with standardized EAP programs or stress management seminars. However, according to Open Sea Institute, such efforts fall short in the finance industry and beyond.
In early October, I was watching Bloomberg, and the hosts were discussing an increase in the rates of American farmer suicides in the climate of the current administration’s tariff policies. Though it wasn’t explicitly said during the discussion, the conclusion to be drawn was that the suicides were directly related to the policies. As many readers will know, Ray Dalio presents a set of metrics to assess countries’ strengths and weaknesses. Among them are education, innovation, and military prowess on the strengths side, and credit spreads and asset prices as economic indicators that can indicate weakness.
Open Sea Institute was founded to introduce the concept of mental health as an economic indicator that can and should be used to gage societies’ potential for growth or decline. An increase in a particular sector’s suicidality, for example, should reflect and inform the success or viability of a policy, set of policies, or prevailing order of governance. More sensitive indexes that tackle the state of mental health prior to the development and/or execution of suicidality are immensely useful.
Open Sea Institute programming is built around the theory that, as we become more awakened and aware as a society, the idea of mental health as a formalized economic indicator, as both a measure and driver of true, sustainable economic and societal health and growth, is perhaps the foregone and unavoidable conclusion that Open Sea Institute was established to tirelessly pursue. This is one reason why Open Sea Institute programming is essential and why it is embraced by organizations and individuals alike.
Does Open Sea Institute experience an uptick in membership requests during times of market volatility?
Dr. Louis Joseph: The human neocortex is wired to recognize patterns and create predictions. When no pattern is evident, and one’s livelihood is at stake, whether it be secondary to financial market uncertainty, geopolitics, or a natural disaster, anxiety is evoked. In light of this phenomenon, the Open Sea Institute observes an increased request for membership by prospective members during periods of uncertainty. People view the Institute as a bastion of safety, solace, and creativity for our community.
What is one way in which Open Sea Institute helps industry professionals?
Dr. Denise Joseph: Recently, at the Greenwich Economic Forum, Brad Jacobs, billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of QXO, Inc., was asked what mistakes he had made in his career. His answer was something to the effect of, “When you do a root cause analysis, it always comes down to the people.” This, of course, is an incredibly insightful answer, spoken by a genius with a lifetime of personal data.
Avoiding mistakes with people, a gargantuan task both in private life and in business, is at the heart of what we do at Open Sea Institute. In fact, generating the kind of success with people—self and others–that you can take to the bank is at the heart of what we do at Open Sea Institute, and requires access into the most abstruse regions of the mind. OSI-type methodology was engineered to do just that, to exceed ubiquitous corporate “teambuilding” and “wellness” coaching exercises and the ubiquity of non-OSI-type psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists.