Board of Directors
Dr. Baskaran Pillai
Founder & Chairman
Dr. Baskaran Pillai is an international spiritual leader, humanitarian and scholar-mystic from Southern India. As founder of non-profit Tripura Foundation, Dr. Pillai is committed to abolishing world poverty and relieving human suffering in all forms. His organization sponsors Girlstown and Boystown orphanages for impoverished children, delivers feeding programs throughout India and offers other relief programs for the impoverished, mentally ill and destitute around the world. Dr. Pillai has Masters degrees in English Literature and Comparative Literature from Madurai University and a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of several books including Life Changing Sounds: Tools from the Other Side, Miracles of the Avatar, and One Minute Guide to Prosperity and Enlightenment, and the DVD program The Grace Light.
Sonja Benkovich
Director
Ms. Benkovich has been involved with Tripura Foundation since 2000, and joined the Board of Directors in 2006. She is Managing Director of Astroved Pvt. Lmtd., a consumer Internet company. Prior to Astroved, Ms. Benkovich provided financial and technical services to the New York brokerage and manufacturing industries for nearly a decade. Her training in the fields of accounting, financial analysis and control systems led her to manage the rollout of a first-of-its-kind Bond Trading system with links to the New York Stock Exchange, Spear-Leads-Kellogg clearing house and over 40 of the nation's largest brokerage houses. She has also worked the corporate and emerging market bond desks at Bear Stearns, providing key decision-making analysis. Ms.Benkovich also worked in tandem with Coopers & Lybrand and KPMG consultants in building and delivering enterprise resource planning systems for Fortune 100 companies. She has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Virginia.
Vish Iyer
Director
Vish Iyer is a medical doctor practicing in Pittsburgh P.A. He was
exposed early to spirituality in Madras, now Chennai, India. After his
medical education from Chennai, he served in the Indian Army as a
Captain for five year with distinction. Proceeding to England, he rose
to hold administrative and teaching positions in University of
Leicester associated hospitals. Moving to the U.S., he is in private
practice covering a wide spectrum of health care.
Achieving commonality amongst the world's religions is his quest. He
practices and teaches meditation and gives lectures on integrating the body-mind complex to the soul so as to achieve tangible, practical results. He is also the author of books on these subjects.
Dr. Iyer enjoys playing racquetball, (meditating while playing racquetball!) He is married to Akila, a banker and they have two grown ups Vishal and Vinod.
Elaine Kueper
Global Director
Elaine Kueper has been the Global Director of Tripura Foundation USA since 1992. She has also served as a Director of Tripura Foundation India since 2000. Ms. Kueper was fortunate to develop and oversee Tripura'a broad offering of charitable programs in southern India. Elaine has been studying meditation for the past 16 years and has been teaching meditation techniques in seminars around the world since that time. Ms. Kueper studied communication disorders at the Masters level while at the University of Minnesota, and has a B.A. from the University of Iowa.
Stacey Lawson
Director
Stacey Lawson is co-founder of the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (CET) at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Visiting Foreign Faculty of TRP School of Business, SRM University in Chennai, India. Previously, Ms. Lawson held roles as a technology executive and entrepreneur. She was Division General Manager for Siebel Systems and Senior Vice President of Marketing for Parametric Technology Corporation. Prior to PTC, Ms. Lawson was founder and President of InPart Software, a venture-backed start-up acquired by PTC in 1998. Ms. Lawson is also a speaker and thought-leader in the area of conscious business & leadership. She leads executive workshops, retreats, and meditation courses which incorporate 15 years of study and practice in eastern & western wisdom traditions. She holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Washington and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.