Tiny version (2 sentences)

Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is an award-winning engineer, international bestselling author, movie producer and philanthropist. His work has been nominated eight times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Short version (200+ words)

Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is an award-winning engineer, international bestselling author, movie producer and philanthropist. He is Co-chair of One Billion Acts of Peace, which has been nominated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and seven other Nobel Laureates for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was also Executive Producer of the movie Walk With Me, and Adjunct Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore. He co-founded the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI, pronounced “silly”). He retired from Google as its Jolly Good Fellow at the age of 45.

Meng led the creation of a groundbreaking mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course at Google called Search Inside Yourself, which was featured on the front page of the Sunday Business section of the New York Times. Search Inside Yourself is also the title of Meng’s first New York Times bestselling book which has been endorsed by world leaders such as President Jimmy Carter of the United States, business leaders such as Eric Schmidt of Google, and spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama. Meng hopes Search Inside Yourself will eventually contribute to world peace in a meaningful way.

Meng delivered a TED talk on compassion at the United Nations and spoke at the White House about the development of kindness. 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.

Full version

Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is an award-winning engineer, a two times New York Times bestselling author, a movie producer, and a philanthropist whose work has received eight nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Meng was one of Google’s earliest engineers. He retired from Google in 2015, at the age of 45. His job title was “Jolly Good Fellow (which nobody can deny)”. Like many things in Google, his unusual job title started as a joke, but eventually became real. Among many other things, he helped build Google’s first mobile search service, headed the team that kept a vigilant eye on Google’s search quality, and was a founding member of Google’s Chinese Search team. After a successful eight-year stint in Engineering, Meng became the first practicing engineer in Google’s history to move from Engineering to People Operations. His job description was, “Enlighten minds, open hearts, create world peace”.

Meng led the creation of a groundbreaking mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course at Google called Search Inside Yourself, which was featured on the front page of the Sunday Business section of the New York Times. Search Inside Yourself is also the title of Meng’s first New York Times bestselling book which has been endorsed by world leaders such as President Carter of the United States and President Nathan of Singapore, business leaders such as Eric Schmidt of Google and John Mackey of Whole Foods Markets, and spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama and Deepak Chopra. Meng hopes Search Inside Yourself will eventually contribute to world peace in a meaningful way.

Meng is Co-Chair of the One Billion Acts of Peace campaign, which has been nominated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and seven other Nobel Laureates for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is also a Co-founder of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI, pronounced “silly”). He is a Founding Patron of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), Founding Patron of the World Peace Festival, and an adviser to a number of technology start-ups. He was Executive Producer of the movie, Walk With Me. He was also Adjunct Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore.

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 has won many computing-related awards, including the Championship of Singapore’s National Software Competition.

Meng created one of the world’s earliest websites on Buddhism in 1995. 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 was featured on the front page of the New York Times. He delivered a TED talk on compassion at the United Nations and spoke at the White House about the development of kindness. He has met four United States Presidents: Biden, Obama, Clinton and Carter. The Dalai Lama gave him a hug for his 40th birthday. President Carter gave him a standing ovation at one of his talks. 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.

(Last update: 29 March 2021)

 

Dalai Lama