Eric Potterat, Ph.D. is a retired Commander from the U.S. Navy who served as the Force Psychologist for the U.S. Navy SEALs. As their chief psychologist, he provided, supervised and managed the assessment and selection programs, mental training, mental toughness and performance psychology training, clinical care, operational readiness/resilience training and neurocognitive evaluation programs for all the active duty personnel across the NSW Force world-wide.
In addition, Eric is an Associate Member of OPTIBRAIN, the Center for Optimization of Brain Resources to Improve Performance. OPTIBRAIN is a joint consortium (UCSD and NHRC) focusing on researching the brain systems, neural mechanisms and cognitive processes that characterize optimal performance in extreme environments. He is considered one of the leading experts in individual and organizational resilience and performance enhancement in high-risk operational occupations. For the last 14 of his 18 years in the Navy, he has focused his research and practice on stress resilience, operational/special application psychology, selection, neuropsychology, human factors, mental toughness training, and elite human performance in extreme environments. He is also credited for developing and implementing the Mental Toughness Training Program for the U.S. Navy SEALs and embedding it into their training pipeline. He has 30 peer-reviewed, professional journal and/or chapter publications, has been featured on national media (History Channel, MSNBC, national magazines, etc.), and has served as a consultant on human factors, selection and assessment, and mental toughness to many organizations including, NASA, the U.S. Olympic Training Center, many law enforcement and government agencies, and numerous professional (NFL, MLB, NBA, etc.) and collegiate sports teams.
