Dr. Carolyn Jacobs is the Dean and Elizabeth Marting Treuhaft Professor of the Smith College School for Social Work; she is also the Director of the Contemplative Clinical Practice Advanced Certificate Program. She has taught primarily within the research and practice sequences of the School. Her areas of professional interest include religion and spirituality in social work practice and organizational behavior. She has written and presented extensively on the topic of spirituality in social work. In 2001 she was elected to the National Academies of Practice as a distinguished social work practitioner.

Dr. Jacobs received her B.A. from Sacramento State University, her M.S.W. from San Diego State University, her doctorate from the Heller School of Brandeis University and her training as a spiritual director from the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. She maintains a spiritual direction practice.

Recent publications include: Jacobs, C. (2007) “Race, ethnicity, and class: A conversation with Hilda Ryūmon Gutiérrez Baldoquín, Sharon Suh, and Arinna Weisman, moderated by Carolyn Jacobs” in (Eds.) Gregory, P. N. and Mrozik, S., Women practicing Buddhism: American experiences. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications; Jacobs, C. (2007) “Spiritual Development” in Lesser, J. G. and Pope, D. S. (Eds.) Human Behavior in the Social Environment. Chapter 8, 188-203. VT: Allyn and Bacon; Jacobs, C. (2006) “Transformation and Kaleidoscope Memories” Smith College Studies in Social Work, 76 (4); and Jacobs, C. (2004) “Spirituality and end-of-life care practice for social workers” in Berzoff, J. & Silverman, P. R. (Eds.) Living with dying: A handbook for end-of-life healthcare practitioners. (pp. 188-205) NY: Columbia University Press.

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Bio coming soon

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Mirabai Bush was a co-founder of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and served as Executive Director until 2008. Under her direction, The Center developed its programs in education, law, business, and activism and its network of thousands of people integrating contemplative practice and perspective into their lives and work.

Mirabai holds a unique background of organizational management, teaching, and spiritual practice. A founding board member of the Seva Foundation, an international public health organization, she directed the Seva Guatemala Project, which supports sustainable agriculture and integrated community development. Also at Seva, she co-developed Sustaining Compassion, Sustaining the Earth, a series of retreats and events for grassroots environmental activists on the interconnection of spirit and action. She is co-author, with Ram Dass, of Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service, published by Random House.

Mirabai has organized, facilitated, and taught workshops, weekends, and courses on spirit and action for more than 20 years at institutions including Omega Institute, Naropa Institute, Findhorne, Zen Mountain Monastery, University of Massachusetts, San Francisco Zen Center, Buddhist Study Center at Barre, MA, Insight Meditation Society, and the Lama Foundation. She has a special interest in the uncovering and recovery of women's spiritual wisdom to inform work for social change. She has taught women's groups with Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Sharon Salzberg, Joan Halifax, Margo Adler, Starhawk, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Vicky Noble, and other leaders.

Her spiritual studies include meditation study at the Burmese Vihara in Bodh Gaya, India, with Shri S.N. Goenka and Anagarika Munindra; bhakti yoga with Hindu teacher Neemkaroli Baba; and studies with Tibetan lamas Kalu Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Kyabje Gehlek Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and others. She also did five years of intensive practice in Iyengar yoga and five years of Aikido with Kanai Sensei. Her earlier religious study included 20 years of Catholic schooling, ending with Georgetown University graduate study in medieval literature. She holds an ABD in American literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Before entering the foundation world, Mirabai was the first professional woman to work on the Saturn-Apollo moonflight at Cape Canaveral and later co-founded and directed Illuminations, Inc., from 1973 to 1985 in Cambridge, MA. Her innovative business approaches, based on mindfulness practice, were reported in Newsweek, Inc., Fortune, and the Boston Business Journal. She has also worked on educational programs with inner-city youth of color.

Mirabai has trekked, traveled, and lived in many countries, including Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, India, Nepal, Morocco, Ireland, England, Scotland, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Italy, Pakistan, and the Caribbean. She is an organic gardener in Western Massachusetts and the mother of one adult son, Owen.

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Betty Sue Flowers, Ph.D., is currently writing scenarios for the post global financial crisis world with a group from the James Martin Institute at Oxford University. From 2002 through 2009, she served as Director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. Before that time, she was the Joan Negley Kelleher Centennial Professor in the English Department at the University of Texas, as well as a Piper Professor and a member of the University's Academy of Distinguished Teachers. During her years at the University of Texas, she also served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Director of the Plan II Honors Program.

Flowers is a native Texan with degrees from the University of Texas and the University of London. Her scholarly publications include a book entitled Browning and the Modern Tradition and articles on Donald Barthelme, Adrienne Rich, Christina Rossetti, poetry therapy, writing and other subjects. Her annotated edition of Christina Rossetti's complete poems was published in 2001 in the Penguin Classics Series. She also edited Daughters and Fathers with Lynda Boose, as well as four books in collaboration with Bill Moyers: "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth," "A World of Ideas," "Healing and the Mind," and "Genesis." She has published three books of poetry: "Four Shields of Power" (with three other poets), "Extending the Shade" and "Blue Lioness" (2002).

Flowers was consultant for the nationally televised series, "The Power of Myth" as well as a host for the radio series "The Next 200 Years". Her 10-part television series, "Conversation with Betty Sue Flowers," was aired on the Austin PBS affiliate, KLRU. Flowers has served as a moderator for executive seminars at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, as a consultant for NASA, as a member of the Envisioning Network for General Motors, as a member of the vision team for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and as a Visiting Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy. In 1992, and again in 1995, 1998 and 2001, she worked with an international team to write Global Scenarios for Shell International in London-stories about the future of the world for the next 30 years. She has edited a book in conjunction with Joseph Jaworski on the inner dimensions of leadership, Synchronicity, and is finishing another with Jaworski, Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer on "Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future." Flowers was the editor of global scenarios for sustainable development and scenarios for the future of biotechnology, both sponsored by the World Business Council in Geneva.

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Bradford C. Grant is the Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Computer Sciences, and the Director of the School of Architecture and Design at Howard University. He is the former Chairperson and Endowed University Professor of Architecture in the Department of Architecture at Hampton University, Hampton, VA. He received his Master’s degree in Architecture with a focus on social and cultural factors from the University of California at Berkeley. A registered architect, Mr. Grant has extensive experience in housing and community design through his research, teaching and architecture practice as principal of the architecture firm AGWA Architects, Hampton, VA. His research on cultural environmental design practice can be found in his work titled “Accommodation, Resistance and Appropriation in African American Building”, in Craig Barton’s Sites of Memory (Princeton Press, 2000) and in the Directory of African American Architects/Survey of African American Architects, co authored by Dennis Mann (University Cincinnati, 3rd edition released as web site). 

Mr. Grant was the Director of Hampton University Department of Architecture Urban Institute, the community design center and a service learning arm of the University. As part of the Urban Institute, Mr. Grant had conducted many urban and community design studies including the North King Street Urban Corridor, Hampton, VA., the Monticello Street Corridor, Norfolk, VA, and the Poindexter Street Commercial Corridor in Chesapeake, VA. along with architecture design assistance work with the City of Virginia Beach’s office of Housing and Community Service. His community design work has earned him the Hampton Clean City Commission Award, a Proclamation of Appreciation from the City of Hampton, the Universal Design Education Award from Adaptive Environments, Boston and Award of Merit from the Virginia Downtown Development Association.

Professor Grant has served as President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA 2001-2004) and was a member of the Board of the Hermitage Foundation, Museum and Slone Collections, Norfolk, VA. He is involved in research, practice and teaching of architecture accessibility and Universal Design, Fair Housing and cultural issues in architecture. He is currently working on or has completed several commissioned projects and planning assignments including the addition the Guiding Light Church, Portsmouth, VA, the Blair Middle School addition, Norfolk, VA and Arbor Music, a site specific environmental sculpture for the Botanical Gardens, Norfolk, VA. 

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Bio coming soon

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Bob Shapiro is the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Monsanto Company and the former Chairman of Pharmacia Corporation.

He became Monsanto's President and Chief Operating Officer in 1993; Chairman and CEO in April 1995; and was appointed Chairman of Pharmacia Corporation in April 2000 following the merger of Monsanto Company and Pharmacia and Upjohn, a position he relinquished in February, 2001.

Previously, he was Vice President and General Counsel for General Instrument Corporation and served as an attorney with the New York law firm of Poletti, Freidin, Prashker, Feldman & Gartner and as a professor of law at Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Mr. Shapiro served in government as Special Assistant to the General Counsel and later to the Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. He also has been a consultant to state and local government of law enforcement, service delivery systems and transportation policy.

Mr. Shapiro has served under previous appointments on the President's Advisory Committee on Trade Policy under President Clinton; White House Domestic Policy Review of Industrial Innovation under President Carter; the Civil Aeronautics Board Advisory Committee on Procedure; and the Massachusetts Governor's Task Force on Transportation.

Mr. Shapiro is a member of the American Society of Corporate Executives and The Business Council. Mr. Shapiro received the 1999 Emerging Markets CEO of the Year Award, the John R. Miller Award as the Outstanding Corporate Marketing Executive of 1984, and the Special Citation for Outstanding Achievement from Sales and Marketing Management Magazine.

Mr. Shapiro is a 1959 graduate of Harvard College and a 1962 graduate of Columbia University of Law. He has four children and lives in Chicago

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Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is Google's Jolly Good Fellow (which nobody can deny). His unusual job title started as a joke, but eventually became real.

Meng was one of Google's earliest engineers. Among many other things, he helped build Google's first mobile search service, and headed the team that evaluated and kept a vigilant eye on Google's search quality. After a successful 8-year stint in Engineering, he now serves with Google University, where he is the Head of the School of Personal Growth. One of his main projects is Search Inside Yourself - a Mindfulness-based Emotional Intelligence course, which he hopes will eventually contribute to world peace in a meaningful way.

Outside of Google, Meng is the Founder and (Jolly Good) President of the Tan Teo Charitable Foundation, a small foundation dedicated to promoting Peace, Liberty and Enlightenment in the world. He is also a Founding Patron of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE).

Meng earned his MS in Computer Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He went to Santa Barbara mainly for the beach, but didn't mind the graduate degree either. He has won many computing-related awards, including the Championship of Singapore's National Software Competition. Prior to coming to the United States, Meng had a successful engineering career in Singapore. (He knew it was successful because nobody offered to fire him).

Meng created one of the world's earliest websites on Buddhism in 1995. He considers himself a Buddhist "on most weekdays, especially Mondays". He is an avid meditator, because meditation facilitates in him inner peace and happiness "without doing real work". Meng occasionally found himself featured on the New York Times and other newspapers. His personal motto is, "Life is too important to be taken seriously".

Meng hopes to see every workplace in the world become a drinking fountain for happiness and enlightenment. When Meng grows up, he wants to save the world, and have lots of fun and laughter doing it. He feels if something is no laughing matter, it's probably not worth doing.

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Arthur Zajonc is professor of physics at Amherst College, where he has taught since 1978. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He has been visiting professor and research scientist at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, and the Universities of Rochester and Hannover. He has been Fulbright professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics he researched electron-atoms collision physics and radiative transfer in dense vapors. His research has included studies in parity violation in atoms, the experimental foundations of quantum physics, and the relationship between sciences, the humanities and contemplation. He has written extensively on Goethe's science. He is author of the books Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry, Catching the Light, co-author of The Quantum Challenge, and co-editor of Goethe's Way of Science. In 1997 he served as scientific coordinator for the Mind and Life dialogue with H.H. the Dalai Lama published as The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama (Oxford 2004). He again organized the 2002 dialogue with the Dalai Lama, “The Nature of Matter, the Nature of Life,” and acted as moderator at MIT for the “Investigating the Mind” dialogue in 2003 (seewww.mindandlife.org). He has also been General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America (1994-2002), president of the Lindisfarne Association, and a senior program director at the Fetzer Institute.

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