Empathetics Names Stan Nowak CEO and Jennifer Lang Commercial Leader to Rebuild Human Connection in Healthcare

New leadership team to accelerate innovation as health systems face unprecedented burnout, fragmented patient experience, and a crisis of human connection.

Boston, MA, December 17, 2025 — Empathetics, the nation’s leading provider of evidence-based empathy training for healthcare professionals, today announced that Board Chair Stan Nowak has been appointed Chief Executive Officer, and healthcare growth leader Jennifer Lang has joined as Senior Vice President of Sales and Account Management. Their leadership signals a bold new chapter for Empathetics at a time when the healthcare industry is demanding solutions that restore trust, rebuild communication, and bring humanity back to clinical care.

Fixing Healthcare’s Human Breakdown

In hospitals across the country, clinicians are shouldering impossible workloads. Patients feel unheard. Families feel lost. And the pandemic left behind a new reality: More clinicians chart with their backs to patients than ever before.

Empathetics is tackling this crisis head-on.

“The need for Empathetics has never been more urgent,” said CEO Stan Nowak. “Healthcare is forged in the interaction between clinician and patient. For patients, this moment is healthcare itself—and it has never been more vulnerable to disruption. Dr. Riess and Empathetics created a game-changing solution that restores what patients and clinicians need most today: empathy, trust, and the ability to truly see the human being in front of you.”

Founded by Harvard psychiatrist and empathy science pioneer, Dr. Helen Riess, Empathetics has become the industry’s authority on teaching clinicians the skills that matter most at the point of care interaction.

A Leadership Team Built for the Next Era of Patient Experience

Stan Nowak brings decades of experience driving consumer behavior change and strengthening the “last mile” of healthcare delivery — the moment where human interaction meets clinical decision-making. Empathetics, founded by Harvard psychiatrist, empathy researcher, Dr. Helen Riess in 2011, is nationally recognized as an industry innovator in the science of human connection in clinical settings. Working together, the leadership team will continue to propel the company’s mission and vision to expand empathy in practice, improve the patient and clinician experience, and deliver better care outcomes.

“For decades, I’ve studied the lack of connection between patients and clinicians, and how to repair it,” said founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Helen Riess. “Clinicians are exhausted, burned out and cynical, and they want to get back to caring for their patients. With new technology like AI to relieve some of the administrative burden, healthcare professionals have the space for human connection again – and they want the help to rebuild those connections. Positive human connection also restores the purpose and meaning that draws people to healthcare professions and motivates them to stay.”

Joining Empathetics is Jennifer Lang, an industry executive who has spent her career helping mission-driven healthcare organizations engage patients, empower clinicians, and scale quickly and effectively.

“Our healthcare system is strained, and the cracks are widening,” said Jennifer Lang. “Patients are confused, clinicians are burned out, and trust is at an all-time low. Empathetics is rewriting that story. We’re helping doctors reconnect with patients — not through more clicks, but through more humanity.”

Restoring Empathy Isn’t Optional — It’s the Future of Care

Health systems are increasingly turning to Empathetics to improve the patient and physician experience, create empathy-centered cultures, improve patient satisfaction, and deliver better outcomes. The company’s neuroscience-backed approach has been validated through randomized controlled trials and proven in real-world settings.

Because when clinicians feel supported, patients feel seen. And when empathy improves, outcomes follow.

About Empathetics

Empathetics is the first and only evidence-based empathy education solution proven to make empathy a learnable skill. Rooted in neuroscience and validated through rigorous clinical trials at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Empathetics transforms the science of empathy into practical, measurable skills for leaders, clinicians, and care teams. Results show significant improvements in patient experience and up to 83% improvement in employee retention among health system clients.

​FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE