Tan Le Profile
Tan Le is a technology entrepreneur, business executive and sought-after keynote speaker. As Founder & CEO of Emotiv, a bio-informatics company focused on identifying biomarkers in the brain for mental and other neurological conditions using electroencephalography (EEG), she is pursuing the dream of widespread brain function screening to catch early signs of autism, epilepsy, learning disabilities, ADHD and other conditions.
Today, many kinds of medical tests are performed on infants and young children looking for early signs of disease or developmental problems that can be cured more easily when caught early, but there are still no tests for brain development. Tan Le's vision is the potential to implement inexpensive cognitive and neurological monitoring for developmental disorders.
EMOTIV is the neuroengineering company that developed a breakthrough interface technology for digital media, taking inputs directly from the brain. This technology utterly transforms the way we interact with computers. Applications for the technology and interface, span an amazing variety of potential industries – from gaming to interactive television, everyday computer interactions, hands-free control systems, smart adaptive environments, art, accessibility design, market research, psychology, medicine, robotics, automotive, transport safety, defense and security. Plans for introducing EMOTIV into these and other broad realms are well established with developers and researchers in over 120 countries already working with the technology. Emotiv is recognized as the world leader and pioneer in this field of brain computer interface.
In 2000 Tan Le co-founded SASme, a wireless technology company, providing SMPP platforms to telecommunication carriers and content aggregators in Australia, Asia and Europe.
Tan Le was named "Young Australian of the Year" in 1998 and was voted one of Australia's "30 Most Successful Women Under 30" in that same year. Her acceptance speech earned a standing ovation, brought many people to tears and has been described as possibly the most moving ever heard in the New Parliament House.
Tan Le's story was featured in the Eternity Exhibition of the National Museum of Australia. Tan has been featured in Who's Who in Australia since 1999, Who's Who of Australian Women in 2007 & 2008, and Fast Company's "Most Influential Women in Technology" in 2010. Tan Le has also been honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader since 2009.
Born in Vietnam in 1977, Tan Le arrived in Australia as a refugee at the age of four. Tan was awarded a KPMG Accounting Scholarship at the age of sixteen, and entered Melbourne's Monash University in 1997. She went on to complete a combined Bachelor of Commerce/Laws (Honors) in 1998 and started her career with one of Australia's leading law firms. Tan Le was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 2000.
At 15 years of age, Tan Le worked to help Vietnamese people in Melbourne. At 18, she became the president of the Vietnamese Community of Footscray Association, which was established to find employment for Vietnamese Australians.
Tan Le was a Special Visitor to the United Kingdom as a guest of the British High Commission and Foreign Commonwealth Office, a Goodwill Ambassador for Australia in Asia and is a Patron of the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development Program. She has also been an Ambassador for the Status of Women since 2001.
Tan Le has been appointed to a number of prominent Boards including Plan International Australia, Australian Citizenship Council, National Committee for Human Rights Education in Australia, RMIT Business in Entrepreneurship and the Centre for the Mind.