Dina Kaplan is Founder of the The Path, which teaches meditation for the modern mind. The Path has taught thousands of people to meditate around the world and at festivals including SXSW and Sundance.

Dina is a certified meditation teacher and leads meditations around the world at conferences, for large and small groups, brands, corporations and individuals in Japan, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Iceland, across the U.S. and elsewhere in Asia and Europe. She has studied and practiced dozens of meditation techniques, including Vipassana, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Vedic (or “mantra”) meditation, loving-kindness or (“metta”) meditation and more.

Before founding The Path, Dina was co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the tech start-up Blip.tv in web video. Before Blip, Dina was an Emmy-award winning television news reporter for local NBC stations. Prior to reporting, Dina worked as an associate producer for MTV News and at the White House as Director of Research for the Office of the White House Counsel. Dina was named one of Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs and Fast Company’s Most Influential Women of Web 2.0. She has a column about meditation for entrepreneurs on Forbes.com and has written articles for the New York Times, today.com, Time Magazine’s Motto, Marie Claire, Medium, Town & Country and more.

Dina has taught classes at Columbia Business School, Columbia Journalism School, NYU’s Stern School of Business and NYU’s ITP program for engineers and designers. She has spoken at SXSW, the World Economic Forum, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, Le Web (Paris), TEDx Athens, DLD (Munich), Cannes Lions, Monaco Media Forum and CeBit.

What led Dina to meditation?

While she was COO of Blip, the company raised tens of millions of dollars and built a top 50 website. Dina was in the press every day, hailed as a role model for women founders. But there was a dark side to the story. Dina had a secret she didn’t share. She was losing herself, and the results were rippling through her body.

Unsure how to fit into the male-dominated tech industry, and even her own male-dominated company, Dina suppressed her natural instincts and emotions to fit in. The result was panic attacks, a feeling of being faint and tingles racing through her body, making her feel like she was about to pass out.

One day when she didn’t think she could cross the street to her office, a 10-second walk, Dina made a non-obvious decision. She decided to leave everything behind to get healthy. She did a transition with the board, left the company, and booked a one-way ticket to Bali, with a wink and a nod to the cliche.

Dina ended up traveling around the world for two and a half years, falling deeply into meditation and studying with masters and gurus around the world. Her mission is to reach people with impact and kindness, so they can in turn help to push meditation into the mainstream. Through teacher training programs, retreats, weekly meditations and more, The Path now reaches thousands of people a year, training and inspiring people to be more mindful in all areas of their lives.