Our Team
Erick Rinner
Co-Founder
Non-Executive Director
Erick has 32 years in private equity and corporate finance including 24 years with Milestone and related funds. Investments have included businesses in consumer products, IT services, healthcare, specialist retail, business, and support services sectors. Erick has made more than 40 acquisitions across Europe.
He is Co-Founder and Partner of Impact Expansion Management (Luxembourg), a social and environmental impact private equity firm. Erick also sits on the board of private companies in Luxembourg and Switzerland.
He is a Non-Executive Director of Mind and Life Europe, a leading not-for-profit organization in the field of contemplative science and an incubator for discovery in all of the fields this new science touches.
Erick is an executive-in-residence at IMD in Lausanne, where he teaches mind training techniques.
Erick is also an executive coach with a particular focus on mindfulness coaching and is a trained mindfulness teacher in MBSR.
Dr. Tania Singer
Scientific and Curriculum Advisor &
Honorary Co-Founder
Prof. Dr. Tania Singer is a social neuroscientist, psychologist, and world expert on empathy and compassion. She has a passion for creating bridges between fields that typically never interact such as linking neuroscience with economics, science with arts, or science with spirituality.
She currently heads the Social Neuroscience Lab of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. Her research focus is on human sociality, empathy and compassion and their trainability through mental training.
She is Founder and principal investigator of the ReSource project, a large-scale longitudinal mental training study on the effects of mindfulness and compassion-based mental practices on brain plasticity, mental health, and prosocial skills and behaviors.
Her current research focus is the CovSocial project which aims to shed light on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the emotional well-being and behaviors of Berliners and whether online mental trainings of 10 weeks can decrease loneliness and mental health challenges as well as increase resilience and social cohesion.
Prof. Dr. Singer also gives workshops and masterclasses to translate her scientific knowledge and the mental training programs she has developed for the use in different domains of society: health care, business, individuals and education.
DISCLAIMER: Prof. Dr. Singer is advising Humanize in her additional office time available to her (“Nebentätigkeit”) which has been approved by the legal department and the president of the Max Planck Society. She decided to donate all potential future revenues from her advisory shares in Humanize to some good causes (e.g. for science, education, healthcare). Further, the title of honorary co-founder was given to her as Humanize is heavily relying on her 25years of research and psychological expertise in developing mental training programs and Masterclasses. She has however no executive functions in the company.
Iris Krause
Chief Strategy Officer
A native of East Germany, Iris left her communist past the very night the Berlin Wall came down. Her adventurous nature led her to San Francisco via Cologne, Reims, Paris, Nimes, Reutlingen and New York. She initially studied psychology and then went on to business,
double majoring from the European Partnership of Business Schools in both Germany and France. Iris started her corporate career in the investment world, spending 20 years financing growth, acquisitions, and ownership transitions for private companies. During that time, Iris negotiated over $3.2 billion in investments across the capital structure and risk spectrum.
Iris left the investment world to pursue meaning and purpose, applying her skills in the digital health and mental wellness spaces. For 8 years, Iris co-led Wisdom Labs, a B2B platform for emotional and mental wellbeing as their CFO, COO and finally their Chief Revenue Officer.
Iris firmly believes that businesses can be a power for good in this world. Her goal is to use her analytical skills and keen business acumen to drive positive organizational and societal change with radical candor and compassion.
Kelley Griffiths
Chief Operating Officer
Kelley is passionate about the intersection of contemplative practice, collective liberation, and how we can lead and run more conscious organisations.
She has spent 15 years in various management roles, most recently acting as Director of Operations for Switzerland’s largest independent marketplace for tradespeople.
Fascinated by Buddhism from a young age, she moved to London to study Classical and Contemporary Tibetan Language and the Theory of Religion at London’s SOAS university but didn’t complete it. Instead, she managed a nightclub and started a globe-making business with a friend. Realising she had a talent for business and management, she graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in Theatre Production before joining a world-leading contemporary circus as an Associate Producer and International Tour Manager.
In the last six years, she has completed professional courses in Yoga and Mindfulness for Addictions, Yoga Nidra Teacher Training, Meditation Teacher Training, and Cognitively-Based Compassion Training with Emory University. Most recently, she graduated from Nalanda Institute’s two-year Contemplative Psychotherapy program and is now completing an online master’s at King’s College London in the Psychology & Neuroscience of Mental Health.
Uzay Takaoglu
Chief Technology Officer
Uzay has over 20 years of large enterprise software development and implementation experience in both public and private sectors. He has established a proven track record of providing technical leadership and hands-on professional performance for complex large scale life-cycle software engineering projects.
Uzay is the Founder of Instant Markets, an online search engine for procurement specialists.
He is also the VP of Product for Instant Systems, a technology partner to startups focused on developing engineering teams and process support. Instant Systems has 50+ startup partners in their partner network.
Gregg Trueman
Chief Product Officer
Gregg operates at the intersection of communications strategy and emerging technology to envision, create, market, and manage digital media experiences that uplift and transform humanity.
A veteran of New York City's Silicon Alley, he was the Founder of Neographic, a pioneering interactive development agency where he launched a series of influential Internet sites starting in 1993, including the first AT&T corporate site.
Gregg is the Co-Founder of Daily Haloha, a mobile app and technology platform for people to connect more deeply and compassionately to themselves and to others through a shared experience of reflection and curiosity around a single daily question.
Most recently, he was Executive Vice President of Technology Solutions for Goodfuse, a boutique creative communications agency in the global WPP network, where he directed the development of award-winning websites and apps for a wide range of healthcare and pharmaceutical companies.
Sandeep Kumar
Director of Engineering
Sandeep is a designer of application architecture and scaled web apps, and has managed people, projects, products, deployments over the last 15 years.
The focus of his professional journey has been the transformation of concepts into realized products.
Franziska Schmitt
Senior Program Manager
Franziska is a PhD candidate in Digital Entrepreneurship and Diversity at Freie Universität Berlin and an Entrepreneurial Architect with over five years of work experience in tech startups, finance, strategic communications, and business development.
With a Bachelor in Finance from Stuttgart, Germany, Franziska worked at financial institutions in Germany and Silicon Valley as a press spokeswoman, financial analyst, and in strategic communications. In 2015, Franziska moved to New Jersey, and earned a master’s degree in Business Communications at Rider University. During this time abroad, Franziska published a book chapter on gender quotas, volunteered as the President of the Rider Women Leadership Council's Mentoring Program, and completed an internship at Morgan Stanley in San Francisco. After graduating, she worked at tech startups in New York and Princeton as a product manager and marketing expert while teaching a bachelor's course in Digital Communications at Rutgers University.
After four years in the United States, she spent four months in Indonesia to study mindfulness. She has been living in Berlin since 2019, worked at a consulting firm, and managed a female founders accelerator. She is also a meditation, mindfulness, and yoga teacher. Before joining Humanize, Franziska taught entrepreneurship education at Europa-Universität Flensburg.
Lori Schwanbeck
Senior Trainer &
Curriculum Development Team
Lori is a psychotherapist, mindfulness teacher, curriculum experience designer, organizational emotional intelligence facilitator, and retreat leader.
She is a senior faculty member at Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), an organization born at Google, where she mentors and trains teachers, and designs and facilitates both in-person and virtual mindfulness based emotional intelligence programs. Lori was involved in a 2-year project in Bhutan working in partnership with the Gross National Happiness initiative bringing SIYLI’s program to all levels of the Bhutanese government.
The heart of Lori’s work is embodied presence and conscious interconnectedness – to others and to nature. She delights in sharing this through her nature-based mindfulness retreats at Esalen Institute, Modern Elder Academy, and Canyon Ranch.
Lori is also a curriculum contributor and facilitator at LinkedIn, Purpose Blue, Wisdom Labs, Mindfulness Rx and the Mindfulness Training Institute, and is a faculty member leading nature-based mindfulness retreats at Esalen Institute, Modern Elder Academy, and Canyon Ranch.
Margaret Cullen
Senior Trainer &
Curriculum Development Team
Margaret Cullen is a licensed psychotherapist and was one of the first ten people to become a Certified MBSR teacher. For over 30 years, she has pioneered secular contemplative programs for a wide variety of populations including physicians, nurses, HIV positive men, cancer patients, overweight women, military spouses, college students, clinicians and educators.
As a clinician, Margaret has been a facilitator of support groups for cancer patients and their loved ones for 30 years.
In 2010, she was invited by Thupten Jinpa to contribute to the development of the Compassion Cultivation Training, first through the Center for Compassion, Altruism, Research and Education at the Stanford School of Medicine and currently as Founding Faculty for the Compassion Institute where she co-created the first online teacher training.
Margaret is also the Founder of Compassion Corps, a program offering grants to support compassion teachers to offer free programs to under-resourced communities and a Founding Board Member of the Compassion Education Alliance.
Peter Bonanno
Senior Trainer &
Curriculum Development Team
Peter Bonanno, Ed.M., designs and teaches large-scale mindfulness and emotional intelligence programs for organizations worldwide. He has been a founding team member in six different organizations within the fields of mindfulness, emotional intelligence, leadership development, and K-12 education.
For the past ten years, Peter has custom designed and taught mindfulness-based programs for diverse audiences including the United Nations, Google, the Bhutanese Ministry of Education, the US Navy, the American Red Cross, Cleveland Clinic, and Stanford University.
As the former Director of Program Development for the Search Inside Yourself (SIY) Leadership Institute, he designed a train-the-trainer program that built a global network of over 750 certified trainers, reaching over 100,000 participants including thousands of pro-bono participants in the social sector. He serves as a train-the-trainer faculty and new teacher coach for SIY.
Peter’s creative work has been featured on three apps, for which he has been a curriculum designer, game designer, meditation teacher, and filmed instructor: Simple Habit, ReThink Care, and Balance. He has served as an advisor to Mindful Education and Transformative Educational Leadership, two non-profits in the education sector.
Peter is currently writing Start Here: A Field Guide to Your Inner Life, a visual introduction to contemplative practices.
Günter Hudasch
Senior Trainer &
Curriculum Development Team
Günter has taught many MBSR programs since 2004. He organizes mindful leadership programs and mindfulness training for companies.
He has been a mindfulness instructor in the ReSource Project at the Department of Social Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany.
He trains MBSR teachers in different European programs and chaired the MBSR-MBCT Teachers Association in Germany (MBSR-Verband.de) for 16 years since its beginnings in 2005.
He was Co-Founder of the European Association of mindfulness teachers (EAMBA.net) and is currently chair of a non-profit organization for Mindfulness in Education, which teaches many school teachers (AKiJu.de).
Emīl Blūm
Lead Designer
Emīl Blūm is an interdisciplinary designer who passionately uses creativity and his decade-long experience in graphic design and advertising to help organisations solve critical challenges in communication and interaction with their audiences.
He is currently living in Portugal and splitting his time between being a father to two amazing children, running Calumma Design Studio to support organisations that want to help people and the environment to thrive, as well as being a design director for Daydream Believers - an innovative educational organization based in Scotland that focuses on designing unique learning resources to bring creativity to classrooms globally through collaboration with brands like LEGO, Rockstar Games, D&AD, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, PechaKucha and Dentsu Creative.
Passionate about using his knowledge and skills to improve people’s lives, Emīl currently leads the Humanize design team to develop a frictionless and enjoyable user experience for all who discover and participate in Humanize Dyads.
Vikas Shinde
Software Engineer
Vikas is a full stack developer with rich experience in website design and building, and also backend development. His main role on the Humanize development team is to lead support, resolving critical bugs and issues of both the frontend and backend systems.
Sachin Sharma
Software Engineer
Sachin is a software developer with expertise in the design and development of scalable, reliable and high-performing productivity applications.
He's extremely enthusiastic to learn new technologies and skills to leverage his growth and expand his skill set.
Tanmay Tripathi
Mobile Application Developer
Tanmay is as a mobile applications developer for Humanize, utilizing technologies like Flutter on Android and iOS. In addition, he has also worked on cross-platform mobile development technologies like React Native with JavaScript as well as web technologies like React JS. Previously, he also worked on a social networking product for Instant Systems as a mobile developer.
He is passionate about software development and problem solving, and following the latest trends in technology, as well as putting them to use.
Arif Rehman
QA Engineer
Arif is a Quality Assurance Engineer for the Humanize web and mobile applications.
He has more than two years of experience in quality assurance engineering in different testing domains including manual, automation, performance & functional, and database.
Govind Rajput
Software Engineer
Govind is a frontend software engineer for Humanize, using technologies like JavaScript, TypeScript and React JS. He also works on JS mobile tech, and React Native.
Since childhood he has been interested in technologies and eager to learn about them, and that is what drove him to pursue engineering and a career in IT.
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