In a Living Well session moderated by Worth Media CEO Josh Kampel, Sensei CEO Alex Walterspiel made the case that lasting wellbeing is best supported when wellness is embedded into how organizations operate, rather than offered as an isolated benefit. Walterspiel described Sensei’s origins, co-founded by Larry Ellison and acclaimed oncologist Dr. David Agus, and its “Move, Nourish, Rest” framework, which only works, she said, when leadership treats rest as a performance input rather than a reward for slowing down. Citing a Deloitte finding that 73% of C-suite executives feel unable to take the rest they need, Kampel pressed on why so many companies still get this wrong, and Walterspiel didn’t spare her own company from the critique: Sensei itself once assumed a discounted gym membership counted as a wellness benefit before recognizing it was “a good start” but not enough.
The conversation turned to what real investment looks like in practice—wellness stipends, structured sabbaticals with actual goals attached, and small operational changes like Sensei’s own shift from 30- and 60-minute default meetings to 25- and 55-minute blocks, giving employees time to simply get up and move. Walterspiel was careful to distinguish this from a “glorified vacation on company time”; the difference, she said, is intentionality and structure, with senior leadership modeling the behavior rather than just funding it from a distance. She acknowledged the industry doesn’t yet have hard data linking these interventions to bottom-line performance, but said the correlation between rest and output, already well accepted in professional sports, is only a matter of time before it’s proven in the boardroom. Kampel offered some supporting figures of his own: the McKinsey Health Institute has estimated that investing in holistic employee health could unlock up to $11.7 trillion in global economic value, while Oxford research has linked a one-point rise in employee happiness scores to $1.39 to $2.29 billion in additional annual profit at large firms. All evidence, he noted, that the business case may be closer than most boardrooms assume.
Much of the discussion focused on the difference between a one-time reset and lasting behavior change. Walterspiel walked through Sensei’s range of offerings, from self-guided experiences for individuals who are curious about a range of wellness modalities to fully structured group retreats for Fortune 500 boards and venture firms, all built around personalized intentions rather than a one-size-fits-all program. The real test, she argued, isn’t how someone feels while at a Sensei property, it’s whether they can sustain that shift once they’re back home “where the conditions are not perfect.” That’s why Sensei treats a guest’s first stay as the start of an ongoing relationship, following up on the specific commitments a guest made, so the relationship doesn’t reset to zero with every visit.
Walterspiel also touched on how Sensei uses data without overwhelming guests with it, working with wearables like Oura and Apple Watch to help people focus on one meaningful signal rather than the hundred data points modern devices generate. She used sleep quality after a night of drinking as an example: the data makes clear, without judgment or prohibition, that a nightcap doesn’t actually improve rest. The session closed on a broader industry challenge: real change, Walterspiel said, has to start at the top. She described her own three-week vacation in Europe, where she deliberately stayed unreachable, as a signal to her team that taking real time off is not just allowed but expected, an idea she’s formalized at Sensei through “Flex Friday,” a no-meetings, no-questions-asked day off once a month. Her closing point was direct: productivity isn’t improved by controlling people’s time, it’s improved by giving them room to recover.
