Tan Le

Founder & Chief Executive Officer Emotiv

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Tan Le is the founder and chief executive of Emotiv, the neurotechnology company she started in 2011 with Dr Geoff Mackellar to move electroencephalography out of the research laboratory and onto people’s heads in ordinary settings. EEG has been used clinically for a century, but the equipment was expensive, immobile and operated by specialists; Emotiv’s proposition is that a wearable headset, sold at a price researchers and developers can afford, produces brain data from real life rather than from a chair in a lab, and that this data is the foundation for understanding cognition at scale. She came to the field by an unlikely route. She arrived in Australia as a four-year-old refugee from Vietnam, entered Monash University at sixteen, graduated with honours degrees in both law and commerce and practised as a barrister and solicitor, then left law to found a text-messaging software company, sold it, and moved to Silicon Valley. She was named Young Australian of the Year in 1998 for community work, and published a book on brain enhancement, “The NeuroGeneration”, in 2020.

Career Highlights

• Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Emotiv, named as such on the company’s own about page alongside co-founder and chief technology officer Dr Geoff Mackellar.
• Co-founded Emotiv in 2011 to make brain data more accessible, interpretable and useful, and to serve as a foundation for cognitive AI infrastructure.
• Named Young Australian of the Year in 1998, for charitable work with the Vietnamese-Australian community in Melbourne, while still in her early twenties.
• Entered Monash University at sixteen and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours), beginning her career at the leading Australian law firm Freehills and being admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 2000.
• Founded SASme, a software company working on high-speed text messaging, and sold it before relocating to Silicon Valley.
• Author of “The NeuroGeneration: The new era of brain enhancement revolutionising the way we think, work and heal”, published in February 2020.
• Has given three TED talks: “A headset that reads your brainwaves” (2010), “My immigration story” (2012) and “How does the brain work in everyday situations?” (2018).
• Recognised among Australia’s “30 Most Successful Women Under 30” and featured in the “Hope” section of the Eternity Exhibition at the National Museum of Australia.

Professional Journey

Tan Le was born in Vietnam in 1977 and came to Australia as a four-year-old refugee, growing up in Footscray, a working-class suburb in Melbourne’s west, in a family she has described in exactly those terms. She attended Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School and entered Monash University at sixteen to read law and commerce, graduating with honours in both.

Her public life began before her professional one. As president of the Vietnamese Community of Footscray Association she did extensive charitable and advocacy work across Melbourne, and in 1998, in her early twenties, she was named Young Australian of the Year for it. She began her legal career at Freehills, one of Australia’s largest commercial law firms, and was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 2000.

She did not stay. In her own account of the decision she realised she needed to be more proactive about what made sense to her rather than follow a traditional path, and she left law to found SASme, a software company built around high-speed text messaging, at a point when SMS was becoming an infrastructure rather than a novelty. She sold the company and moved to Silicon Valley.

Emotiv followed in 2011, founded with Dr Geoff Mackellar, who remains its chief technology officer. The technical premise is that EEG, the measurement of electrical activity at the scalp, does not need clinical-grade equipment and a laboratory to be useful; a well-designed wearable headset, sold affordably, can produce data from people going about their ordinary lives. The commercial consequence is a business that sells both to researchers, who get an instrument at a fraction of the traditional cost, and to developers building applications on top of the data. The company’s own framing has moved with the industry: it now describes its purpose as making brain data accessible, interpretable and useful as a foundation for cognitive AI infrastructure.

Emotiv’s headsets have been used in demonstrations that made the technology legible to non-specialists, including enabling a quadriplegic driver to steer a race car and work on controlling bionic limbs. By August 2018 the company employed around 100 people across Silicon Valley, Hanoi and Sydney and worked with researchers and developers in 120 countries. Le has been a persistent public advocate for the field, through three TED talks spanning 2010 to 2018 and through “The NeuroGeneration”, her 2020 book on the coming era of brain enhancement and what it will mean for how people think, work and heal. She has also chaired the Monash Global Leaders’ Network Advisory Committee for the West Coast of the United States, keeping a link to the university she entered at sixteen.

Education

Monash University

Bachelor of Laws (Honours)

Monash University

Bachelor of Commerce (Honours)