C’mon, Get Happy R
Rekhi Singh
JL By Jessica Laskey Meet Your Neighbor
SAC STATE ALUM ENDOWS CHAIR FOR STUDY OF HAPPINESS
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IA DEC n 21
ekhi Singh’s motto is simple: “Happy people are more successful.” Singh is on a mission to help everyone find wellbeing through happiness. He has founded programs and centers around the world to study the science of happiness—including one at his alma mater, Sacramento State. “Whatever you do unhappily, you can do it better if done happily,” says Singh, a native of India who moved to Singapore at age 30 and then to Sacramento in 1987 to earn his MBA. “Happy people are more successful than the other way around. A meaningful life is where you feel connected and help others.” Singh began his career in information technology, earning a bachelor’s degree in engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. He wanted to start a business, so he moved to California to obtain a graduate degree at Sac State. He completed leadership programs at UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School, and founded R Systems, a publicly traded global technology and analytics services company that has enjoyed enormous success. His faith called him to do more. “The Sikh Holy Book talks about Anand, which means joys, and Bismad, which means awe,” Singh says. “Positive psychology and the science of happiness are just that.” Singh decided the best way to spread these values was to build educational programs and institutions dedicated to the science of happiness. He founded the Rekhi Centre of Excellence for the Science of Happiness at IIT Kharagpur in 2017. Two years later, he funded the first endowed professorship at Sac State, the Rekhi Singh Endowed Professor in Happiness, housed in the Department of Psychology. “I looked back at my life and I figured out that my schools where I had studied had played a big role,” Singh says. “I was grateful and that’s my way of giving back.”
