"I always thought that having intense, late-night conversations about God made me a deep person. This lecture proved to me that there's actually something you can do to gain understanding. It's obvious that Kenny Felder has done more than just talk about these things." --Jim Ray, UNC '01 "Simply put, Kenny Felder is a genius. He has the uncanny ability to logically connect seemingly unrelated ideas and make them comprehensible to anyone." --Jay Hall, Vice President of Sales, MuTek Solutions "This lecture helped me make sense out of the jumbled thoughts I've had in my head that plague me whenever I take a break and just think about life. It put the pieces together and gave me back the inspiration I thought I'd lost." --Sarah Barden, Duke '02

How do you live the life you decide to live, instead of the life that just happens to you? Can logic and common sense actually help you answer questions about God? Can philosophical discussions actually lead to real life changes? Felder addresses these questions in his witty, interactive lecture.

Kenny Felder has degrees from UNC in Physics and English. In 1992 he founded a software company, One Tree Software, in his dining room—and three years later, he sold that company to Microsoft.

But Felder insists that the real turning point in his life was when he met Augie Turak, founder of the Self Knowledge Symposium, in 1988. Turak sent Felder on a life-long spiritual quest that formed "a much more central part of my life than business or software ever could," Felder insists. "I didn't turn to God or self-knowledge because I wanted my company to succeed. I started a company because Augie Turak said it was a great way to get to know yourself."

After selling his company, Felder moved to Redmond, Washington, where he went on to become a manager in Microsoft's Natural Language Processing group. "We were studying the way the human mind works, so we could get computers to do the same thing. It was fascinating work. But it was child's play compared to spiritual seeking. The whole time I was in Redmond, I kept looking for a group of fellow seekers. I called all the spiritual groups in the Yellow Pages. I started a group of my own, with 30 people. But I was never able to replicate the magic that happens in the Self Knowledge Symposium."

So Felder returned to Raleigh in 1998, after less than four years at Microsoft, and rejoined the SKS. Since that time, he has given his Einstein, Bill Gates, and the Buddha lecture to sold-out crowds at UNC, NCSU, and Duke.

"A very close friend of mine once told me 'You have to turn your brain off to really practice religion,'" Felder explains. "I developed this lecture to explain how wrong I think that is. For me, logic compels me to spend my life looking for deeper answers."

Leila Plummer, a Computer Science student at UNC, says "I've never seen anything like it. He took a whole room full of students who were skeptical or even hostile, and he spent most of the time asking them questions. And by the time he was done, they had told him why spiritual seeking was important, and how to go about it. The whole thing was based on common sense, not taking his word for anything.

"By the time it was done, I knew I couldn't just think about this. I had to go do something about it."

Invite Kenny Felder to speak at your organization