Board

Chade-Meng Tan

Meng Tan

Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is founder and chairman of the board of SIYLI. He is also Google’s Jolly Good Fellow (which nobody can deny). Meng was one of Google’s earliest engineers. Among many other things, he helped build Google’s first mobile search service, and headed the team that kept a vigilant eye on Google’s search quality. His current job description is, “Enlighten minds, open hearts, create world peace”.

Outside of Google, Meng is the Founder and (Jolly Good) President of the Tan Teo Charitable Foundation, a small foundation dedicated to promoting peace, liberty and enlightenment in the world. He is a founding patron of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). He is also a founding patron of the World Peace Festival, and adviser to a number of technology start-ups.

Meng earned his MS in Computer Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He went to Santa Barbara mainly for the beach, but didn’t mind the graduate degree either. He considers himself a Buddhist “on most weekdays, especially Mondays”. He is an avid meditator, because meditation facilitates in him inner peace and happiness “without doing real work.” Meng occasionally finds himself featured on newspapers. He was featured on the front page of the New York Times and delivered a TED talk at the United Nations. He has met three United States Presidents, Obama, Clinton and Carter. The Dalai Lama gave him a hug for his 40th birthday. His personal motto is, “Life is too important to be taken seriously”.

Meng hopes to see every workplace in the world become a drinking fountain for happiness and enlightenment. When Meng grows up, he wants to save the world, and have lots of fun and laughter doing it. He feels if something is no laughing matter, it is probably not worth doing.

Marc Lesser

Marc Lesser

Marc Lesser is the CEO, founder and serves on the board of SIYLI. Marc is a long term Zen student and teacher. He is the author of Less: Accomplishing More By Doing Less, and Z.B.A. Zen of Business Administration; How Zen Practice Can Transform Your Work and Your Life, published by New World Library.

He was the founder and former CEO of Brush Dance, a publisher of greeting cards, calendars and gift items, with spiritual themes and artwork. Spent 15 years taking Brush Dance from an idea in his garage to a multi-million dollar publishing company, with distribution throughout the U.S. and the world.

He facilitates retreats for CEO’s, business leaders, and management teams. Has been co-leading Company Time retreats for business leaders for the past 10 years.

He was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years and was former director of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. He received his M.B.A. degree from New York University and his Undergraduate degree in psychology from Rutgers University. He is currently a board member of the Social Venture Network.

Marc was a farmer for three years, bakes bread for most major occasions, and he was a pitcher on his hometown baseball team in New Jersey.

Dr. Philippe Goldin

Philippe Goldin

Dr. Philippe Goldin, is founder and board member of SIYLI, and serves in the role of researcher and advisor on the science of mindfulness and emotional intelligence. He completed his Ph.D. in Psychology at Rutgers University and completed his Clinical Psychology Internship at the UC San Diego/ San Diego VA consortium. He is currently a research scientist in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. His clinical research focuses on: a) functional neuroimaging investigations of cognitive affective mechanisms in both healthy adults and in individuals with various forms of psychopathology; b) the effect of mindfulness meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy on neural substrates of emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, and attention regulation, and; c) the effect of child-parent mindfulness meditation training on anxiety, compassion, and quality of family interactions.

Rand Rosenberg

Rand Rosenberg

Rand Rosenberg most recently held the position of Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Development at PG&E Corporation. Prior to his work at PG&E, Rand spent several years in the field of investment banking.  In addition to being a partner of Montgomery Securities he held senior positions at Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers where he was a Managing Director and Head of Global Telecommunications Investment Banking. He also served as Head of Corporate Development at the Pacific Telesis Group. Rand received his BA from Whitman College and MBA from the University of Chicago.  Rand currently serves on several non profit boards including ecoAmerica, Wildaid, and Whitman College.