Born in Sri Lanka, Randy Fernando has been introduced to both meditation (by his mother) and programming (by his father) as a child. Randy's fascination with making pretty pictures on the computer led him to study computer graphics at Cornell.
This passion took him to NVIDIA in Silicon Valley, where he managed many award-winning projects, authored three #1-ranked books on graphics programming, and received two patents. Fernando was also an inaugural board member of the NVIDIA Foundation. HereRandy ran several award-winning projects over 7 years, including authoring three books on advanced 3D graphics. He has been a dedicated Buddhist practitioner for many years. He has taught a daylong Spirit Rock with Matthew Brensilver: “Technology as an Existential Threat to Mindfulness”.
He then served for 7 years as founding Executive Director of Mindful Schools, a nonprofit that has taught mindfulness to millions of kids and over 30,000 educators worldwide. Mindful Schools was featured in TIME magazine's cover story "The Mindful Revolution."
Most recently, he's the Co-Founder & Executive Director at the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit addressing the harms of social media. CHT is featured in The Social Dilemma, Netflix's most watched film in Sep. 2020. Randy is a board member of Spirit Rock Meditation Center and the Buddhist Insight Network.
