Optimal Trust

About Stuart Samuel Diamond

Stuart Samuel Diamond has lived parallel lives as an artist, entrepreneur, and academic. 

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Haverford College in philosophy and music, with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, Diamond first emerged as a composer in New York’s East Village, pioneering electronic music and new modes of performance. His work, recognized for its originality and audience impact, was supported for six years by the Criterion Foundation. To this day, his creative work extends beyond music into multimedia, placing him at the forefront of visual, literary, and AI-driven forms of expression.

In parallel, he pursued an entrepreneurial career. As co-founder of Empowered Media and Empowered Medical Media, he was at the forefront of the digital media and online marketing revolution. He worked with major defense contractors, Fortune 500 companies, human rights organizations, and the United Nations, while also consulting with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on counter-terrorism strategies. As editor-in-chief of Empowered Doctor, he oversaw thousands of health-related news stories and the production of the National Physician of the Year Awards. Independently, he created educational programs for Wall Street on the nature of trust and the financial system — work that led directly to the development of Optimal Trust in collaboration with top financial firms.

Diamond has also lived a parallel life in academia. He has served as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, bringing the value of the liberal arts to colleges across the United States, and for nine years was a Trustee of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco.

Across these domains — the arts, business, and philosophy — his work has consistently sought one unifying theme: that trust emerges from the deepest layers of our shared humanity. Whether expressed through music, forged in enterprise, or examined in philosophy, trust is the element that allows human beings to cooperate, to build legitimacy, and to create systems that endure.

Optimal Trust is the culmination of that search: a framework that makes this universal force measurable, actionable, and alive.