Mike Lee

Founder and Former CEO, MyFitnessPal

Bio:

Mike Lee is co-founder of MyFitnessPal, the world’s leading health and fitness platform. Prior to founding MyFitnessPal, Mike co-founded NextC, a venture-funded startup focused on building online communities. After MyFitnessPal was acquired by Under Armour, Mike served there as the Chief Digital Officer for three years. During his 20-year tenure in the technology industry, Mike has held leadership positions at several other top start-ups in Silicon Valley, including Palm, Handspring, Beyond.com, and Regis McKenna. Mike graduated summa cum laude from Princeton with a B.A. in economics.

Story:

One of Mike’s strongest desires in life is to help people, a desire inspired in him by his parents from an early age. Originally committed to a career as a doctor while in college, Mike realized that his passion for helping people extended beyond medicine. He could also help others through his love of technology. Mike Lee built a DIY calorie log to help people lose weight. Almost a decade later, that app has grown into the worlds largest fitness app and has helped hundreds of millions of users lose over 300 million pounds combined. Mike’s authentic, values-based approach to leadership is inspiring to young professionals as they seek to develop their own approach to being leaders of impact and change.

Why Committed:

For MyFItnessPal to succeed, I knew we had to hire the best team possible. But great people want to work for great leaders, and we knew we had a lot of work to do to become better leaders - to earn the right to lead our amazing team. I was lucky to have the help and advice from so many incredible leaders who gave their time and energy to help our team succeed. I am more than happy to pay that help forward however I can. We need more great leaders in this world. Anything I can do to help develop those leaders is a true privilege. And I can think of no better organization than the Center for Conscientious Leadership to help make this happen. The leadership team and Forum members are truly inspiring to me.

Mike Lee - Leading Myself First: Building MyFitnessPal (2 min)