Micah

CEO

Micah Wonjoon Kessel began building his performance discipline at age ten as a singer at the Metropolitan Opera, sparking a lifelong fascination with the power of experiential learning to create new perspectives, deepen understanding, and advance knowledge. Driven by this passion, he went on to design the world’s top escape rooms and consult on experience for Disney, Microsoft, and the Diabetes Fund.
As a multimedia designer at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium, and later as Design Lead at the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Lab, Micah expanded his understanding of emotions, empathy, and biases. This foundation helped him develop a science-informed approach to experiential empathy, which he’s shared by training leaders at over 100 organizations, including Google, Meta, Deloitte, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School.
Now, as CEO of Empathable, his immersive app has scaled experiential learning theory with AI to develop core skills for over 15,000 managers, doctors, nurses, students, and educators across the U.S. Empathable was honored with the Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund Award, granted by their joint council on Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
Micah has presented at the Asian American Foundation, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the SEL in Action Conference, the Society for Neuroscience and Creativity, and was a 2019 Byron Fellow. His work continues to break new ground in empathy-driven innovation.