Why We

Are Here

Sapien Labs is a 501(c) (3) not for profit organization founded in 2016 with a mission to understand and enable the human mind.

Our mission

is motivated by

The curiosity of us all to understand ourselves and our similarities and differences.

An imperative to understand the impact and consequences of our changing environment and technology on the dynamical function of the human brain, particularly in the context of rising mental health concerns and growing inequality.

A belief that the understanding of the brain and mind belongs to us all and that globally inclusive participation is essential.

Sapien Labs is based in the Washington DC area with a globally distributed team across four continents.

Meet the team

  • Monet Goode

    FOUNDER

    It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.

  • Emmett Marsh

    DESIGN DIRECTOR

    It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.

  • Eleanor Parks

    SUSTAINABILITY DIRECTOR

    It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.

Our Founding Story

Sapien Labs was born out of a weekend experiment with shocking results.

In 2014 our founder Dr. Tara Thiagarajan, a PhD in Neuroscience from Stanford, was running a microfinance company called Madura that was working across 25,000 villages and small towns in India. Madura had built a research group that was working to understand drivers of economic outcomes in impoverished communities. A large field team gathered data on ecosystem and individual level variables to identify those that predicted the economic success of both individuals and entire villages.

Over a thousand different variables were sampled across tens of thousands of people, including cognitive metrics. In this process they encountered many unexpected and curious cognitive dimensions and outcomes. The obvious question was – what was going on in their brains?