Neil Seeman is a Canadian author on mental health and health policy topics, book publisher, and Internet entrepreneur.
Education
Neil Seeman attended Upper Canada College from 1984 to 1988. He obtained a BA (Hons.) from Queen's University in 1992, a JD from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 1995, and a Master's of Public Health from Harvard University in 1998.
Career
Work in media and health policy
In 1998, Seeman was a founding member of the editorial board of the
National Post newspaper. In 2006, he co-founded the Health Strategy Innovation Cell at Massey College in the University of Toronto. Seeman is the co-author of
Psyche in the Lab: Celebrating Brain Science in Canada (Hogrefe & Huber). He is the co-author of
XXL: Obesity and the Limits of Shame (University of Toronto Press) which was a shortlist finalist for the
Donner Prize in 2011.
The authors' concept of "healthy living vouchers" in
XXL was criticized for being impractical and too reliant on state intervention to be effective as a policy tool to curtail the obesity epidemic.
Work in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mental health
In 2008, Seeman invented and patented random domain intercept technology, a form of Web intercept survey.
This led Seeman to found the
Big Data firm RIWI in 2009.
He was CEO of RIWI, which in 2020 went public on the TSX Venture Exchange, until September, 2021.
In May 2023, he published
Accelerated Minds: Unlocking the Fascinating, Inspiring, and Often Destructive Impulses that Drive the Entrepreneurial Brain.
was released in Japan in June 2025 under the title
Entrepreneurship Addiction by
Toyo Keizai.
In November 2023, he co-founded Sutherland House Experts, for which he is Publisher.
Research involvement in mental health and health policy
Seeman was appointed a Fields Institute Fellow in 2022 by the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences.
He is a Senior Fellow of Massey College and a Senior Fellow and associate professor in the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.
He serves as Senior Academic Advisor to the Investigative Journalism Bureau at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and as knowledge translation lead to the Health Informatics, Visualization, and Equity (HIVE) Lab at the University of Toronto.
Seeman was awarded the 2025 Lifetime Mental Health Advocacy Award by the Reach Out Together Foundation.
Personal life
Seeman is the son of
dopamine scientist
Philip Seeman and women's mental health researcher Mary V. Seeman.
He is married to Sarit Goldman-Seeman and is the father of Dori Seeman and David Seeman.
