Chelsea Shields

Dr. Chelsea Shields is a applied biocultural anthropologist, placebo expert, social health activist, and non-verbal communications speaker. She is the founder and CEO of Brandthropologie Agency, a human-centered performance marketing and branding agency. Brandthropologie connects with agencies, businesses, and personal brands to conduct the qualitative research everyone needs, but can't do in-house.

Dr. Shields is an independent strategy consultant and classically trained qualitative and quantitative researcher. She uses evidence-based, agile and mixed methods to help companies: 1. Hear their customers, 2. Make strategic decisions, 3. Set creative directions & recruit best-of-breed talent, 4. Produce world-class, brand-aligned, aesthetically pleasing, & emotionally moving deliverables.

Dr. Shields obtained dual-PhD’s in biological & cultural anthropology from Boston University in 2017 and runs a research-strategy business from Salt Lake City, Utah where she specializes in mixed method agile research and experience strategy.

Her academic work focuses on the physiological significance of sociocultural micro-signals and her dissertation titled "The Social Life of Placebos" is about the evolution and elicitation of placebo responses in non-biomedical encounters. Though seemingly disparate, the placebo effect comes in handy when helping companies’ brand, package, and design the intangible aspects of their company: including emotion, visual style, character, attitude, recognizability, reputation, legacy, originality, and countless more. Grounded in placebo research, Dr. Shields "doses" out the most concentrated combination of intangible "placebos" to impact customer behavior, based on specific business goals, target audience(s), and the competitive landscape.

Dr. Shields is also a TEDFellow, three time TEDSpeaker, and TEDx-SLC Speaker Trainer who approaches public speaking from a totally new perspective, as she focuses on the 93% of communication most people don't have training on: non-verbal communication!

Dr. Shields is formerly known for her activism to combat religious gender inequality, specifically in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or Mormon Church) in which she was raised, though she is currently inactive and is no longer a believer in Mormon doctrine or scripture. Shields delivered a TED Talk on the topic of Religious Gender Inequality at the TED Fellows Retreat in September 2015. In November 2015, the talk was featured on TED.com under the title, "How I'm Working for Change Inside My Church."

Dr. Shields was originally a cultural anthropologist and extended her studies to include a PhD in biological anthropology in order to explain the proximate and ultimate mechanisms of what was happening during ritual healing ceremonies.