Our Team
Chade-Meng Tan
Meng
Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is founder and chairman of the board of SIYLI.org. 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
Marc Lesser
Marc Lesser is the CEO, founder and board member of SIYLI.org and author of Know Yourself, Forget Yourself. Marc is a long term Zen student and teacher and has also authored 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.
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.
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.
Dr. Philippe Goldin
Philippe
Dr. Philippe Goldin, is founder and board member of SIYLI.org, and is in the crucial 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.
David
David Lapedis
David Lapedis is our Director of Operations. He is passionate about the power of individuals and people coming together with a common purpose to transform our world. He leads and lives from his heart, balancing action and presence.
A passion for world changing organizations led David to Google, where Meng, himself and a host of superstars implemented the pilot SIY course on Emotional Intelligence. After seeing the power of this course, David knew his passion for personal transformation was helping individuals thrive at work. David then used his consulting experience and research on Impact to build his own Coaching practice. He has also been a nonprofit manager and worked as a health care consultant at Epic Systems.
David graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Organizational Studies. At Michigan, he received an award for the best published article from the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship and co-authored teaching cases and practices on cultivating compassion and resilience in organizations.
David is a member of the Launching Pad in Berkeley and a national leader with the Centers for Spiritual Living. He loves to play, cook and dance. He grew up in a soccer family and loves most activities that involve movement.
Partners
