Mentor Profile

Dr. Michael Elliott Gerson has worked with a diverse range of soldier-athlete-clinical populations in the field of performance, sport, military, health, and clinical psychology. Currently, Dr. Gerson is a Full-time Faculty / Assistant Professor at National University where he teaches sports psychology and contemplative courses in the JFK School of Sport Psychology Graduate School program.

In addition to working in academia, Dr. Gerson is CEO and owner of Transcend Performance, a high-performance consulting business focused on helping people, teams, and organizations improve their performance and overall well-being. In addition, he is the Director of Mental Skills at Mission 6 Zero, a tribe of performance experts that merge Special Operations Forces veterans with Behavioral Science Practitioners /Researchers. This elite-performance company takes proven U.S. Special Forces strategies and blends them with human performance sciences to teach mental and emotional skill-building tactics. Recently, he co-authored a best-selling book titled, Deliberate Discomfort: How U.S. Special Operations Forces Overcome Fear and Dare to Win by Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable.

From 2014-2017, Dr. Gerson served as the Mental Skills Director for the Seattle Mariners. In this position, he provided individual, small group, team, departmental, and organizational mental skills education, training, and application for performance excellence. In the years between 2006 and 2014, Dr. Gerson worked for the United States Army where he designed and executed performance enhancement programs with some of the nation’s most elite warfighters. The primary focus of these programs was to train the mental skills necessary to elevate and sustain peak performance in rugged and high-risk environments. His primary responsibilities included providing mastery and group performance coaching and comprehensive strength-building strategies in the pursuit of personal and professional excellence. Dr. Gerson has trained thousands of soldiers from various professional specialties including Special Forces Operators, Snipers, Military Police, Combative Instructors, Drill Sergeants, Wounded Warriors, and many more.

Dr. Gerson earned his doctoral and master’s degree in Clinical and Sport Psychology from Argosy University in Phoenix, Arizona, and holds a master’s degree in Health and Exercise from Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California. He played a variety of sports growing up and earned a scholarship to play college baseball at an NAIA Division school in Nebraska. Dr. Gerson was an All-American shortstop and played baseball in eight foreign countries. He has coached baseball at almost every level, from young children to the college and international ranks.

For years, Dr. Gerson has been engaged in training his mind, heart, and spirit through a steady daily meditation practices routine consisting of about an average of two hours a day or over 500 hours a year. This led him to create various mindfulness courses and training programs for JFKU, SJSU, Seattle Mariners, Station Foundation, Mission 6 Zero, and other organizations. Recently, Dr. Gerson earned a certificate of completion from both the Mindful Sport and Performance Enhancement Instructor Training Course and George Mumford’s Mindful Athlete Course.