Maya Shankar’s expertise provides significant legitimacy to The Other Side of Change. Shankar has experience as both a cognitive scientist and the author/host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans, which examines how people adapt once their lives have taken an unplanned path. Her academic and professional background testify to her expertise: She received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a doctoral degree in cognitive psychology from Oxford University, where she was also a Rhodes Scholar; in addition, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at Stanford University. Shankar has worked in government as well as academia, including as a senior advisor in the Obama administration, where she developed and led the Behavioral Science Team. She then became the UN’s first Behavioral Science Advisor. Therefore, she has the education and experience needed to translate complex psychological concepts into everyday language.

In The Other Side of Change, Shankar uses cognitive science, interviews, and personal stories to explore change. As a result, she tends to focus on an individual’s attitude toward change (mindset), their interpretation of change events, and how they reconstruct identity. That focus gives the reader a lot of practical advice regarding change but does not address how economic, institutional, and social inequality can impact a person’s ability to transform themselves. Therefore, this book is most suited to readers seeking to understand patterns of emotion and cognition but less helpful in illuminating how a person might overcome external barriers to self-reinvention.