Anosha Zanjani

She studied mental health and neuroscience at the University of Toronto, initially intending to become a clinical psychologist—a path shaped in part by personal loss. Her early career combined clinical research with direct work supporting people living with serious mental health and neurocognitive conditions across psychiatric facilities, private practice, and academic settings.

The work mattered deeply. But she could not ignore how powerfully the environment shaped the experience of care—whether people felt safe, whether dignity was protected, whether distress could ease, and whether recovery felt possible. The environment mattered for staff, too: it could support their safety and well-being or compound the strain of providing care. Too often, the places serving people at their most vulnerable were among the least carefully considered.

She turned to architecture to help change that, earning graduate degrees in architecture and real estate development at Columbia University.

What distinguishes Anosha's work is her ability to move between perspectives that are too often treated separately—population needs, care delivery, operations, safety, evidence, human experience, spatial design, and capital realities—and understand what their intersection means for the environment.

She founded Mindful Insights to put that integration to work.