The Story Behind Ken and PEL Consulting
The work behind PEL Consulting grew from Ken's lifelong curiosity about human traits, culture, behaviour, neuroscience, and the search for a more fulfilling life path for every person.
Ken's Story
There are many fundamental questions that activate Ken's curiosity: what are the core traits of a person? Why are people so different and also so similar? How do genetics, culture, environment, and brain activations generate the actions, behaviours, and emotions of a human being?
Those questions became deeply personal. Ken was born in South East Asia, learning how to thrive in a traditional collectivist culture, and then moved to Scandinavia as a teenager into a very different individualist culture. While learning to live in that new culture amid confusion around identity, he became increasingly sensitive to how people act, behave, and show emotion. Psychology and neuroscience offered a scientific path to investigate those observations.
From there, the work expanded step by step: first looking at how the brain gathers information through the sensory systems; then how it generates decisions and emotion through the motivational system; then how Intelligence Quotient (IQ) contributes to higher cognitive processing; and finally how personality traits, genetics, and cultural norms modulate the output of all those systems.
The Signature Behind the Tests
What emerged from this research was the idea that every person has a unique signature, like DNA or a fingerprint, made up of sensory, motivation, IQ, and personality traits. The tests were created alongside brain scan data to help identify that signature.
It is the unique combination of these traits that matters. That signature changes gradually as a person grows and makes decisions across a lifetime, and it can also shift suddenly in response to physical or mental trauma.
Once discovered, that signature can help a person build a more fulfilling life around their talents, wants, and needs. It can support better decisions, better friendships and relationships, and better choices in hobbies and careers. That vision of helping people use their signature to build a better future sits at the heart of the work.
PEL's Story
PEL Consulting was started to make the ideal of helping people build a fulfilling life into something real. P stands for increasing Productivity, E for increasing Engagement, and L for increasing Loyalty. The motivation and sensory tests were created to support that dream.
In the beginning, the work focused on gamification and engagement features for mobile applications. Over time, the ambition grew into automating and scaling the tests, while also building a dynamic recommendation engine based on the unique signature of a person's sensory, motivation, and personality traits.
Meeting Pasha became an important turning point. At a business entrepreneurship event he hosted around the UN Millennium Development Goals, Ken shared the tests and the broader vision. After Pasha tried the tests and reviewed the report, the technical path forward became clear. His software engineering and logical thinking complemented Ken's academic and research strengths, and together they shaped the current iteration of PEL Consulting.
The Goal
The long-term goal is simple in principle and ambitious in practice: to create a system that helps every person move toward a more fulfilling life.
PEL Consulting exists to turn that idea into something practical through assessments, insight, and technology built around the unique combination of traits that make each person who they are.
Ken
Co-Founder & Neuroscientist
Ken's work began with a deep curiosity about what makes people different, what makes them similar, and how genetics, culture, environment, and brain activation shape behaviour, emotion, and decision-making.
That curiosity turned into years of research across sensory systems, motivation, cognition, and personality. The result was the idea that every person has a unique signature, and that understanding it can help create a more fulfilling life built around their talents, wants, and needs.
Pasha
Co-Founder & Technologist
Meeting Pasha became a major turning point for PEL Consulting. After being introduced to the tests and the wider vision, he saw the technical path needed to turn the idea into a scalable system.
His software engineering skills and logical approach complemented Ken's academic and research strengths, helping shape the current iteration of PEL Consulting into a company built around assessments, automation, and practical tools for personal development.