Since graduating from Teachers College at Columbia University, Chris Gandin Le has dedicated himself to creating innovative programs that link public health and technology at an international level.

He has helped launch many of the largest suicide prevention programs. These include the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Veterans Crisis Line, Games and Online Harassment Hotline and All Nations Native Hotline. He established the initial Facebook/suicide prevention partnership and co-wrote the Facebook policy on suicide in 2005, and has since helped Google, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest create similar policies.

Chris has served on the advisory board for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the Crisis Text Line, the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the Games and Online Harassment Hotline, and through his company Emotion Technology, he continues to link social media companies and non-profit organizations. Chris is also a speaker with the Fresh Speakers Bureau.

In all of these efforts, Chris takes a profoundly personal approach to large-scale public health issues. His mom fled Vietnam in 1978 when he was four months old, making him one of the first “boat people.” After a year in a refugee camp, they were sponsored by an American family to come to the U.S. Chris spends his life trying to provide others with the same kind of refuge that he felt in that moment.

He we a TED Prize finalist, an Aspen Challenge presenter for the Aspen Institute, a Fellow at SPACE on Ryder Farm and a Born This Way Foundation Launch Scholar.