In year 2020, when COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak, one of the co-founder of OkayMinds Dr. Nimisha Vandan was conducting research on Impact of COVID-19 on different subsets of population living in Hong Kong. She found that regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, race, income, education majority of the population was suffering from a silent pandemic that was Mental Health concerns and there was almost no help available. She shared her concern with other two friends Dr. Amit Wanchoo and Mr. Ameesh Kumar and together they thought about helping people online and founded OkayMinds. They started to conduct workshops to teach simple tips and techniques to deal with stress, anxiety and fear over zoom as a service to the community. First online workshop was conducted for the Foreign Domestic Workers living in Hong Kong.
Make Mental Health a Priority for Everyone.
At OkayMinds, we empower individuals and communities to bring mental health at forefront by prioritizing to deal with emotional and social concerns, needs, and challenges using different approaches. By learning and utilizing OkayMinds approaches people will achieve their full potential both at personal and professional life resulting in, better work-life balance, meaningful relationships and higher productivity.
Dr. Nimisha Vandan, is a former Post-Doctoral Fellow of the School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong. She was part of a global research team that is researching the impact of Covid-19 on public health in Canada, UK, China, and Hong Kong.
She completed her PhD on Patients’ experience with Hong Kong healthcare system from The University of Hong Kong. She has completed her master’s in international health from The University of Tokyo, Japan and has published several research papers and articles in various International peer-reviewed journals.
She is certified to conduct Mental Health First Aid and carries certification in Mental Health Literacy. Nimisha has conducted multiple mental health awareness workshops focusing on mental illness, stress management, positive relationships building etc. in Hong Kong and India. She has been a guest speaker and panellist in various forums and conferences focussing on Health Equity and Mental Health.
Nimisha is a receiver of Post Graduate Scholarship and University Postgraduate Fellowship (2015-2019) awards from The University of Hong Kong. She believes that “we all have role in maintaining, enhancing and supporting mental health for ourselves, friends, colleagues and family.
Trained as a medical doctor, Dr. Wanchoo has been actively organizing and engaging in various mental health programs. He is the CEO of SPACE COMMUNICATIONS, 1st Event
Management Company of Jammu and Kashmir, India. He is also the director of EATON LABORATORIES which is the first pharmaceutical manufacturing unit of Kashmir (India) actively involved in low cost healthcare. Dr. Wanchoo has blended health and entertainment in
healing and supporting mental health initiatives for people in Kashmir and other parts of India and has conducted innumerable mental health workshops in a span of last ten years for various
institutions.
He has utilized medicine, art and culture as an effective tool for generating mental well-being and has been involved in conducting and organizing various workshops on PTSD, mental
disorders and various other related fields. He has also worked with Medicine sans Frontiers in Kashmir (India) and was one of the first to be part of their initial workshops for mental health training in Conflict zones. He has been focused on better mental health, skill building and job
creation as modes of positive change. He has travelled widely around the Globe and has been fellow at leading schools and universities of the world including Yale, Harvard Kennedy School,
London School of Economics, and Asia Global Institute at The University of Hong Kong.
Ameesh has over 21 years of professional experience working for multi-national companies such as Morgan Stanley, HSBC, Citibank, and State Street. He was born and educated in India and after a short professional stint in Mumbai, he moved to Tokyo. After working in Tokyo for 7 years he moved to Hong Kong and has been based here for last 14 years. At present Ameesh is Program Manager with Morgan Stanley in their technology Division.
Ameesh carries an entrepreneurial spirit and has constantly taken the initiative to develop and deliver on ideas and solutions that help benefit businesses, communities, and people.
Ameesh founded DropReceive in 2019 with the idea of digitizing paper receipts & providing financial clarity to the users. He secured seed funding from Cyberport Hong Kong for developing the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The MVP won the “Innovative Smart Solution Award” from Hong Kong Retail Management Association (HKRMA).
Ameesh has been keen learner of Communication skills. He joined Victoria Toastmasters club Hong Kong as member and later joined its executive committee as Vice President membership. Seeing the value, the Toastmasters Program can bring in helping people improve communication skills, he founded an in-house Toastmasters club at State Street and became its Founder President. He has himself completed Competent Communicator and Competent Leader streams of learning and certification from Toastmasters. He is also a Certified Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner from the American Board of NLP and Certified NLP Coach from Evolution-U, Hong Kong.
During the midst of Covid pandemic, facing his own challenges with Mental health and realizing the importance of Mental health for larger community based on research conducted by Dr Nimisha Vandan, he joined her and Dr Amit Wanchoo in co-founding OkayMinds. OkayMinds offers training and workshops for Mental Health awareness, education & first aid and helps create Mental Health ambassadors in the community. Apart from providing management & leadership support, he also brings his expertise of Communication skills and conducts related training and workshops for OkayMinds.
Ameesh is fluent in English and Hindi and has conversational skills in Japanese. Recognizing the importance of language as a medium for connecting with people, he learnt Japanese language and passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) Level 3 while living in Tokyo. After moving to Hong Kong, he turned his interest in helping promote his own mother tongue Hindi. He co-founded Hindi Paathshaala which is a platform for offering Hindi Language classes and other linguistic activities. He has himself acquired dramatist skills and acted and directed in a couple of Hindi Reader’s theatre performances.
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