For decades, companies have focused leadership development on driving behavior change. But that’s no longer enough as leaders face a constant barrage of change and new levels of complexity.
We help companies target leadership development “upstream.” Using unique models of the Perception BoxTM and Emotional Dynamics, we help leaders expand their perceptions and accurately manage emotions to drive the behavior that achieves defined outcomes.
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CEO
Ryan Heinl
Ryan Heinl is the CEO of SIY Global and a trailblazer at the intersection of emotional intelligence, neuroscience, and AI-enhanced learning. With over 15 years of experience leading product innovation in the leadership development space, Ryan has scaled multi-million dollar platforms, built award-winning learning solutions, and transitioned entire companies from old-school models to digital-first disruptors. His current mission? To redefine what it means to lead in the age of AI—where human insight is the new power skill. Equal parts strategist and scientist, Ryan brings a research-backed, results-obsessed approach to everything from executive coaching programs to mindfulness-based learning tools. Also: recovering philosopher, relentless rucker, and low-key data nerd.
Chief Client and Commercial Officer
Felix Sablan
Previously, Felix served as Executive Vice President of Client Solutions at TalentSmartEQ, where he spearheaded global sales and business development initiatives. A mission-driven leader, Felix believes emotional intelligence (EQ) is not only a critical leadership capability but a societal imperative. His work has consistently focused on helping individuals and organizations build the skills necessary for workforce readiness, career advancement, and long-term success, particularly within underrepresented communities.
Felix’s career spans six major industries and multiple senior leadership roles. Prior to TalentSmartEQ, he served as a Senior Leader at the Center for Creative Leadership, where he led a high-performing team of Strategic Partners across 34 U.S. states, Canada, and Latin America, supporting Fortune 500 organizations in solving complex business challenges. His background also includes executive roles in higher education, including Vice President of National Development for Global Health Education and Assistant National Director of Strategic Alliances at Excelsior College. Earlier in his career, Felix held leadership positions in retail and automotive, where he managed multi-unit operations and led a $10.5M flagship automotive dealership. He has also founded and operated multiple businesses, including Sablan Consulting LLC and Tio Chino Restaurant & Bar in San Diego.
Felix actively serves on several boards, including the Selected Services Board for the State of California, the City of San Diego Advisory Board for API Affairs, the County of San Diego Mental Health Advisory Council, and as a Board Director of the Union of Pan Asian Communities (UPAC).
He holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Business Communication from the University of Phoenix and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology at Walden University.
Global Head of Marketing
Beth Almes
Global Head of Product Development
Jason Sbordone
Jason is a talent management consultant and industrial-organizational psychologist with a long history in leadership development, change management, coaching, and program design. He has worked across many industries, geographies, and with leaders at all levels. He believes mindfulness is the key to a healthy world. He also has a passion for travel, photography, drums, and chocolate.
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Director, Client Partnerships
Hal Xheraj
Hal Xheraj is the Director of Client Partnerships at SIY Global, bringing deep experience in learning and development, leadership training, and workforce performance. He has supported professional development initiatives with many of today’s most recognizable organizations across virtually all sectors of industry.
Before joining SIY Global, Hal held senior roles with leading training organizations, building global partnerships and delivering impactful learning solutions. With a strong background in business and a passion for developing human potential, Hal is dedicated to helping organizations thrive through transformative, results-driven learning experiences.
Operations Manager
Lindsay Hirata
Before joining SIY Global, Lindsay brought her passion for well-being and transformational experiences to individuals and groups in various settings as a clinical music therapist, vocalist, and facilitator. Her exploration continues to evolve as she integrates her previous experience with a deep desire to expand the positive impact she can have in the lives of others. Outside work you can find her enjoying time in nature, traveling to new places, reading a good book, and drinking all the boba.
Customer Success Manager
Lisa Kane
With over 15 years servicing the HR industry as a dedicated professional with a passion for building strong relationships, customer satisfaction and ensuring long term value while helping clients achieve their goals.
Ryan Heinl
CEO, SIY Global
Elizabeth R. Koch
Member, Board of Directors
Over the past decade Elizabeth R. Koch has helped found companies in the fields of publishing, media, neuroscience, and transformational experiences. They include: Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, a research foundation that seeks to understand and measure the quantity and quality of consciousness; Catapult, an award-winning publishing company that celebrates extraordinary storytelling; and, most recently, Unlikely Collaborators which creates unlikely collaborations through four areas: Experiences, Storytelling, Investments and Impact. All of Elizabeth’s companies and activities share the same goal of bringing people’s awareness of their Perception Box™.
“We all live inside an invisible but ever-present mental box—a Perception Box,” she explains. “Built from the material of your beliefs, the Perception Box has the power to distort your reality and leave you feeling isolated, disconnected, and fearful. By asking sometimes contradictory but always consequential questions, our goal is to show people how to understand and work with their Perception Box—how to overcome the limiting beliefs that hold them back, expand the possibilities of perception, and invite in new ways of seeing and being seen.”
Elizabeth graduated from Princeton with a BA in English Literature. She earned an MFA in fiction from Syracuse University, where she was advised by George Saunders and won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize for short fiction.
CEO, SIY Global
Ryan Heinl
Ryan Heinl is the CEO of SIY Global and a trailblazer at the intersection of emotional intelligence, neuroscience, and AI-enhanced learning. With over 15 years of experience leading product innovation in the leadership development space, Ryan has scaled multi-million dollar platforms, built award-winning learning solutions, and transitioned entire companies from old-school models to digital-first disruptors. His current mission? To redefine what it means to lead in the age of AI—where human insight is the new power skill. Equal parts strategist and scientist, Ryan brings a research-backed, results-obsessed approach to everything from executive coaching programs to mindfulness-based learning tools. Also: recovering philosopher, relentless rucker, and low-key data nerd.
Dr. Amishi Jha
Dr. Amishi Jha, PhD is Director of Contemplative Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami. Prior to her current post, she was an Assistant Professor at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her B.S in Biological Psychology from the University of Michigan, her Ph.D in Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience) from the University of California–Davis, and her post-doctoral training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University in functional neuroimaging.
With grants from the Department of Defense and several private foundations, she leads research on the neural bases of attention and the effects of mindfulness-based training programs on cognition, emotion, resilience, and performance in education, corporate, elite sports, first-responder, and military contexts.
In her laboratory at the University of Miami, she uses functional MRI, electrophysiological recordings and behavioral techniques to understand why our attention sometimes fails us, and if it can be trained for greater focus and less distractibility. She launched the first-ever study to offer mindfulness training tools to active-duty military service members as they prepared for deployment. What she has discovered is that without intervention, attention is compromised, and attentional lapses increase. Yet, with mindfulness training, attention can be strengthened and protected.
In addition to her own published body of research, her work has been featured at TED, NATO, the World Economic Forum, the Pentagon, and the UK Parliament. She has received coverage in The New York Times, TIME, Forbes, Mindful Magazine, NPR, and more. In addition, she has been interviewed by Joe Rogan, Brene Brown, Russell Brand, Deepak Chopra, Duncan Trussell, Dan Harris, Sharon Salzberg, and many others. In her national bestseller, Peak Mind (Harper Collins), she shares her discoveries on how attention can be trained for optimal performance and well-being. You can find Dr. Jha at http://amishi.com.
Dr. Ekaterina Denkova
Dr. Denkova is a Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at the University of Miami. She serves as the Assistant Director of the Neuroimaging Facility and Assistant Director of Research for the UMindfulness Initiative. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Strasbourg after which she joined the University of Alberta as a CIHR Fellow. She serves as Co-investigator on several federally funded grants with Dr. Amishi Jha.
Dr. Denkova expertise is in cognitive and affective neuroscience. Using brain and behavioral methods, she studies the neural basis of cognitive and affective processes and their trainability with mindfulness training. Her program of research focuses on: 1) The interplay between cognitive and affective processes underlying personal memories and thoughts, such as mind- wandering, ruminations, and intrusions; 2) The impact of mindfulness training on these cognitive and affective processes in high-stress/high-demand professionals.
Dr. Steven Laureys
Dr. Judson Brewer
Jud Brewer, MD, Ph.D. (“Dr. Jud”) is a New York Times best-selling author and thought leader in the field of habit change and the “science of self-mastery,” who blends over 20 years of experience with mindfulness training and a career in scientific research. He is passionate about understanding how our brains work, and how to use that knowledge to help people make deep, permanent change in their lives — with the goal of reducing suffering in the world at large.
Dr. Jud is the director of research and innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, where he also serves as an associate professor in Behavioral and Social Sciences at the School of Public Health and Psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University. Additionally, he is the executive medical director of behavioral health at Sharecare, the digital health company helping people manage all their health in one place, and a research affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previously, Dr. Jud held research and teaching positions at Yale University and the University of Massachusetts’ Center for Mindfulness. Read more about his research.
Dr. Heather Berlin
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NY. She explores the neural basis of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric and neurological disorders with the goal of developing novel treatments. She is also interested in the brain basis of consciousness, dynamic unconscious processes, and creativity.
Berlin is a a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a passionate science communicator. She hosts the Nova series Your Brain on PBS where she explores the latest research on the neural basis of consciousness. She previously hosted Science Goes to the Movies on PBS and Discovery Channel’s Superhuman Showdown. She makes regular appearances on StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and has appeared on the BBC, History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, and TEDx, and was featured in the documentary Bill Nye: Science Guy. Dr. Berlin co-wrote and starred in the critically acclaimed off-Broadway show, Off the Top, about the neuroscience of improvisation, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival show, Impulse Control.
She is the recipient of numerous honors including the Young Investigator Award from the American Neuropsychiatric Association, the Young Investigator Award from the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, and the Clifford Yorke Prize from the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society. She was honored as one of Stony Brook University’s “40 Under Forty”, and won the 2015 BBC University Challenge as part of the Magdalen College, Oxford team.
Berlin received her doctorate from the University of Oxford, and Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and trained in clinical neuropsychology at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Department of Neurological Surgery. She is a visiting scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and was a Visiting Professor at Vassar College, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology/University of Zurich, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
