Who We Are

Lila Shane is the Executive Director for the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Lila attended Sarah Lawrence College where she completed a bachelor’s degree in Child Psychology with a focus on clinical psychology. Upon graduation, she moved back to NYC and started a career in finance where she was trained in investments and trading securities on the stock market.

After the events of 9/11, she left her work and home in NYC and moved to Western Massachusetts. Soon thereafter she took a job at The Center for Contemplative Mind where she worked for 10 years doing administration and finance. Her time at CMind introduced her to alternative methods of leadership and relationship building through integrating contemplative practices in the workplace. In 2012, Lila transitioned her work from CMind and joined the Mind and Life Institute as the Director of Finance for almost five years.

Lila was introduced to Metta meditation at a young age and has sustained that practice, amongst others, for more than 20 years. As a parent, Lila is devoted to emboldening her child to treat themselves and others with kindness and to practice non-judgment in all communication and action. Lila is committed to living consciously and with compassion for all beings.

Carrie Bergman joined CMind in 2000 and since then has helped to coordinate events, projects, and initiatives across all of the Center’s program areas. She now serves as Associate Director, supporting CMind’s programs, operations, website, and publications, including The Journal of Contemplative Inquiry, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Carrie’s personal connection to contemplative methods as a powerful force for change is rooted in her experience of engaging with introspective practices as an undergraduate. She graduated from Dickinson College with degrees in Studio Arts and Anthropology and worked for Dickinson’s museum and fine arts department before joining CMind. As a multimedia fine artist, archer, and student of martial arts, she is particularly interested in creative expression and movement as means of intra- and inter-personal inquiry and transformation.

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, environment, the military, 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. She co-developed the curriculum for Search Inside Yourself for Google, the first program in mindfulness-based emotional intelligence; it has been attended by thousands of Google employees. 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; co-author with Daniel Barbezat of Contemplative Practices in Higher Education: Powerful Methods to Transform Teaching and Learning; and editor of Contemplation Nation: How Ancient Practices Are Changing the Way We Live.

Mirabai formerly taught writing and English literature at SUNY Buffalo, and directed an innovative program there for diversifying the university and preparing students of color for academic challenges.

She is or has been a board member of Shambhala Sun, Omega Institute, Seva Foundation, Military Fitness Institute, the Dalai Lama Fellows, and Love Serve Remember.

Her spiritual studies include meditation 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 was also a student of aikido master Kanai Sensei.

Max Doherty joined CMind in May 2015, and currently serves as CMind’s bookkeeper. They bring to the center a broad range of experience in non-profit and higher education administration, as well as business and management. After moving to the region in 1994, Max worked with the Prison Book Project and other social justice organizations while earning an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. During a five-year stint in Thailand, they co-founded the Phuket Has Been Good to Us Foundation, a youth-focused educational charity organization. Locally, Max served as an Assistant Dean in Student Affairs at Hampshire College, and in development at Greenfield Community College. They are also known in the Pioneer Valley as the former owner-operator of Popcorn Noir, a unique movie-theater/restaurant once featured on NPR’s Marketplace.

Max became a parent in 2011 and cites their parenthood as the impetus for their developing interest in contemplative practices. They are an avid reader of history, physics, and cosmology, and aspire to write comedy and children’s literature, someday.

Maya Elinevsky organizes the Center’s conferences, workshops, and retreats. She holds a BA in Communication from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an Associate’s Degree in Fine Arts from Greenfield Community College. Her professional experience lies in event work and customer service, which she is eager to put to use in this new and exciting environment. As a New England native she is happy to be back in the Pioneer Valley after a two-year stint in New York City, to be closer to her family and friends, and to have the time to discover what really makes her happy. She enjoys doing pottery, skiing, and traveling and is looking forward to learning how to integrate contemplative practices into her life.

David Sable PhD, is an instructor in Buddhism at Saint Mary’s University (SMU) in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he has been teaching since 2000. In 2012, David completed the Interdisciplinary PhD program at Dalhousie University in Halifax bringing together the disciplines of education, psychology, and philosophy to study the impacts of applying mindfulness to pedagogical methods. His thesis titled, “The Impact of Reflective Practices on the Dispositions for Critical Thinking in Undergraduate Courses,” was nominated for Best Thesis in the Social Sciences (2012) and his work noted in the National Teaching and Learning Forum 2012 (21(4)). In February 2014, a peer-reviewed article summarizing his research appeared in the inaugural edition of the Journal of Contemplative Inquiry. In November 2014 David offered the webinar/workshop “Developing Indicators for What Matters Most in Your Teaching” through the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education web site to over 350 faculty members from six countries. David has also published several peer-reviewed journal articles (2005, 2009, 2011) on transformative learning as well as a chapter in a textbook on Transformative Learning in Online Education (2010). In 2016, David was a plenary speaker at the first mid-Atlantic conference on Contemplative Practices for the 21st Century University.

David has team taught six courses in contemplative education for K-12 teachers in the Graduate Education program at Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU). In September 2016 David led the course Inquiry into Contemplative Education and co-led the first offsite, full-credit, residential Practicum/Retreat in Mindfulness/Contemplative Education for MSVU in 2014 and 2016.

David draws on research-based mindfulness practices and applies them to listening, inquiry, and dialogue skills in the secular context of teaching and learning. The instructional design for all his courses includes the set of reflective practices used with students who participated in his doctoral research.

David was initially trained and authorized as a senior meditation teacher by the renowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa. David has led numerous professional development workshops and residential retreats for teachers at all levels. Currently, David is working on a book for educators and trainers on the diverse impacts of reflective practices on learning. 

Trudy Sable, Ph.D. has worked with and within Indigenous communities for over twenty-five years, liaising between government, universities, and the private sector on numerous projects. For sixteen years (2001-2017), she served as the Director of the Office of Aboriginal and Northern Research (OANR) at the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies (GRI), Saint Mary’s University to work collaboratively with Indigenous communities to create culturally responsive educational programs and research projects. In this capacity, she has managed numerous innovative projects such as the Ta’n Weji-sqalia’tiek Mi’kmaw Place Names Digital Atlas and Website, the community-based Innu Nation Environmental Guardians Program, the Innu Youth film project, and the film Wi’kupaltimk: Feast of Forgiveness. A mainstay of all the projects has been the hiring of Indigenous youth researchers as a means to involve them directly in innovative and culturally relevant research while building their research capacity and skill sets.

Core to Dr. Sable’s research over the past twenty-five years has been to create a dialogue between Western Scientists and Indigenous Knowledge Holders and Elders. As examples, she has worked with Environment Canada, Parks Canada, and the former Department of Energy Mines and Resources to develop research and educational programs looking at different perceptions and knowledges of the Atlantic Canadian landscape. She has written numerous reports and published internationally. Her book, co-authored with Bernie Francis, The Language of this Land, Mi’kma’ki, was shortlisted as the Best Scholarly book for the Atlantic Book Awards in 2012. Due to this work, she was appointed the first ever Director of Indigenous Education at SMU to assist the university in responding to the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations for redressing the horrors faced by thousands of Indigenous peoples who attended residential school. Her unique role was to “indigenize the academy” across all levels of staff, faculty, and students at the university specifically to create supportive conditions for emerging Indigenous scholars and incorporation of different worldview in teaching and learning.

Dr. Sable is an Adjunct professor of Anthropology as well as a Part-time teacher in the Atlantic Canada Studies program in which she developed and has taught the Indigenous Peoples of Atlantic Canada: Contemporary Issues course for the past eight years. She has published extensively and presented internationally on the implications of her work on cultural border-crossings for higher education, including at the Contemplative Mind in Higher Education conference on Social Justice at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She is a faculty member of the Atlantic Contemplative Centre relating to issues of diversity within Canadian society, particularly in the fields of health and education. She is now is working independently as the CEO of her newly formed TGS Research Management and Educational Consultants. In this capacity, she is working with the Nova Scotia Museum and the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre on a museum exhibit exploring the history of Urban Aboriginal Mi’kmaq, while continuing with projects in collaboration with the Innu Nation of Labrador and the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq.

Joseph W. Belluck, Esq., graduated magna cum laude from the University at Buffalo School of Law in 1994, where he later served as an adjunct lecturer on mass torts. He is a partner in the Manhattan law firm of Belluck & Fox, LLP, which focuses on asbestos, consumer, environmental and defective product litigation.

Mr. Belluck previously served as counsel to the New York State Attorney General, representing the State of New York in its litigation against the tobacco industry, as a judicial law clerk for Justice Lloyd Doggett of the Texas Supreme Court, and as Director of Attorney Services for Trial Lawyers Care, an organization dedicated to providing free legal assistance to victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Mr. Belluck has lectured frequently on product liability, tort law and tobacco control policy. He is an active member of several bar associations and in May 2016 was elected as the new chairman of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which investigates allegations of misconduct against state and local judges in New York.

Stephanie Briggs is an assistant professor, English, at the Community College of Baltimore County and owner/designer of Be.Still.Move., a program of contemplative, compassionate community building through embodied movement and arts-based learning. She has created racially sensitive self-care programs for the STEM Women of Color Conclave, Howard University Hospital, and the Association of American Colleges and Universities and developed a program of yoga and tap dance, called “Tapping into Yoga.”  She is the 2018-2019 Lenz Residential Fellowship recipient at Naropa University for her project, “Visioning the Eightfold Path: Liberatory Contemplative Practical Empowerment for African-American Faculty” where she addresses inequities towards African-American faculty, particularly those in predominately white institutions (PWIs), through community-based practices that contextualize Buddhist and African/African-American spirituality wisdoms, incorporating art and movement-based theories, to uncover ways of rethinking and releasing suffering and establishing the groundwork for personal, transformative change through contemplative, communal practices.  In addition, in 2016-2017, Stephanie’s project, “Practical Empowerment: Building Contemplative Communities With Student of Color” funded by a grant from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, served as a think tank for faculty of color from six institutions focusing on the value of contemplative communities on college campuses, a qualitative assessment that incorporated personal, practical strategies through contemplative pedagogical processes that were partially informed by African/African-American practices for creating safe, academic spaces.

Michelle Chatman, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of the District of Columbia. Michelle earned her doctorate in cultural anthropology from American University and teaches courses on urban inequality, education, and juvenile justice. A member of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education since 2011, Michelle has been active in numerous CMind initiatives including the 2015 discussion on Race, Diversity, and Inclusion in the Contemplative Movement; 2015 Summer Session faculty; presented at several ACHME annual conferences, the 2016 Building Communities discussion held at the Fetzer Institute; and has served on the 2015 & 2016 ACMHE Conference Planning Committee.

Michelle is vibrant leader on her campus and is enthusiastic about spreading culturally relevant contemplative practices among her campus community. Michelle has shared her “Coltrane Meditation” and “Ancestor Vision Exercise” in workshops, faculty development session, and in her classes. She co-leads UDC’s Contemplative Learning Community, a collective of faculty, students, and staff exploring contemplative approaches through teaching, research, and practice. She is also the Faculty Leader for the Initiative in Civic Engagement and Equity (ICE-E), which supports with social justice related paid internships. The ICE-E program is yet another platform through which Dr. Chatman shares contemplative approaches.

As a contemplative educator, Michelle weaves meditation, song, and reflective practices into her instruction to facilitate students’ connection to themselves, their communities, and the broader world. A practitioner in the Yoruba tradition, Michelle is deeply involved in the DC Pan-African & Black Nationalist communities. In her TEDx talk “How Africa Changed My Life,” Michelle traces her links her contemplative journey back to her volunteer service in The Gambia, West Africa. Michelle is particularly interested in exploring contemplative traditions within the African Diaspora and translating them into viable resources for HBCUs and public universities with diverse student populations. A practitioner of the Yoruba/IFA belief system for 17 years, the teachings of this ancient tradition, along with her Christian upbringing, serves as the basis of her personal, contemplative practices. Along with her teaching and service, Michelle’s life is fulfilled by her husband and their daughter, Zora.

Lenwood Hayman is an Assistant Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education in the Department of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Michigan – Flint. As a teacher, he works to inspire social-justice-minded scholars to ask questions on the health issues situated in the communities from which they come. His research focuses on addressing the social, psychological, structural, and environmental influences of emotional arousal in under-privileged populations. With stress reduction at the center of his scholarship platform, the 3 legs of support each focus on the influence of stress on 1) the eating behaviors of individuals from low-income families; 2) negative mental health outcomes in African American men; and 3) academic achievement in first generation and non-traditional college students. By engaging various stress-reducing methodologies (e.g., mindfulness and other contemplative practices), Lenwood uses this 3-legged agenda to support positive mental and physical health outcomes amongst the aforementioned groups.

Being born and raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Lenwood became interested in social justice activism as a teenager, and focused his time not spent on his studies and lettering in varsity sports as a voice for upward mobility and positive growth for marginalized peoples. Although Lenwood has been primarily restricted to lending his voice to speaking on behalf of the marginalized through his research, he is using his training in mindfulness and contemplative practices to create safe spaces for engaging in meaningful dialog between the well-resourced and the under-resourced. Lenwood is excited to be transitioning into a new position as Associate Professor in the School of Community Health and Policy at his alma mater, Morgan State University, in the Fall of 2019.

Oliver W. Hill, Jr. is a Professor of Experimental Psychology at Virginia State University specializing in the study of cognition. In addition to his research interests in mindfulness and contemplative practices, he is currently principal investigator on two projects funded by the National Science Foundation studying the efficacy of cognitive training as an intervention to enhance mathematical performance. He is also particularly interested in fostering the concept of quality education as a civil right. Hill has been practicing meditation since 1970, and teaching meditation since 1972.

Since 1981 he has been on the path of Siddha Yoga under the guidance of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. He has designed and taught meditation courses and workshops both nationally and internationally.

Hill received his undergraduate training in History at Howard University in Washington, DC, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Michigan.

David Levy is a professor in the Information School (or iSchool) at the University of Washington. He holds a PhD from Stanford University in computer science (1979) and a Diploma in calligraphy and bookbinding from the Roehampton Institute, London (1982). For fifteen years (until December, 1999), he was a member of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where his research focused on the nature of documents and on the tools and practices through which they are created and used. He is the author of “Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age” (Arcade, 2001).

Dr. Levy has taught at the iSchool since 2001, where he has mainly been investigating the challenge of achieving contemplative balance–how as individuals and as a society we might live healthy, reflective, and productive lives while participating in an accelerating, information-saturated culture. Increasingly, he has been taking the fruits of his research and teaching beyond the walls of the academy. These efforts include offering lectures and workshops at other universities and the publication of “Mindful Tech: How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives” (Yale, 2016).

Lisa Napora, PhD, earned her doctorate in Educational Leadership & Policy from the University of Buffalo (UB), where she currently serves as a Visiting Scholar. She teaches leadership courses, most recently at Daemen College in the Executive Leadership & Change master’s degree program.  As an active member of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education since 2010, Lisa has presented at several ACMHE conferences, attended the Building Contemplative Communities and the Assessment & Evaluation of Contemplative Practices in Higher Education meetings held at the Fetzer Institute, and currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Contemplative Inquiry. She also supports the work of the Mind and Life Institute, participating in several Summer Research Institutes both in the U.S. and Europe, and the Academy for Contemplative and Ethical Leadership.

A lifelong contemplative, Lisa’s first language is the language of transformation. Her in-depth study of the relational dynamics of inner and outer change evolved into a passion for contemplative education, contemplative leadership, and social systems change to foster wellbeing. As an activist and advocate, she began contemplative community-building at UB in 2013, which grew into an inter-institutional collaborative across the western NY region.  In 2016, Lisa directed the first-ever SUNY-funded Mindfulness & Health conference, bringing together contemplatives from 50 higher education institutions across NY State. Since then, her work has fostered the development of a regional multi-sector social change collaborative that fosters more healthy, equitable, and resilient communities. In 2017, the Journal of Contemplative Inquiry published an article on this pioneering work.

Lisa is Co-founder and Director of The Mindfulness Alliance (TMA), a non-profit organization that unites practitioners, groups, and organizations to foster awareness-based social change. TMA combines the power of mindfulness practices and the power of community-building to advance collective wellbeing. Lisa’s TMA work focuses on building community-based transformation hubs, fostering the development of collaborative social impact networks in other regions, re-envisioning leadership models, and developing contemplative governance structures. Lisa consults, gives talks and workshops around the country, and promotes the infusion of awareness-based practices within all systems and across all sectors – engaging whole systems to foster wellbeing.

James Autry is former Senior Vice President of Meredith Corporation and past President of its Magazine Group, a 500 million dollar operation with over 900 employees. He directed the operation of 22 special interest publications and 14 magazines, including Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal and Metropolitan Home. Mr. Autry has also been active in many civic and charitable organizations and most notably has worked with disability rights groups for 25 years. He served as chairman of the board of the Epilepsy Foundation of America. Other involvement has included his work with the White House Conference on Families, and the Des Moines Symphony. He is a founder of the Des Moines National Poetry Festival. He fulfilled his military service as a jet fighter pilot in Europe during the cold war. He holds three honorary degrees and in 1991, the University of Missouri-Columbia awarded him the Missouri Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service in Journalism, an award given for a long track record of excellence. Jim is the author of six published books, the most recent (Spring 1998) of which is Real Power: Business Lessons from the Tao Te Ching. In this unusual and exciting collaboration, Mr. Autry has worked with well-known poet and translator Stephen Mitchell in a business leadership interpretation of Mr. Mitchell’s best-selling translation of the Tao Te Ching of Lao-tzu.

Rachel Bagby, J.D., author of Divine Daughters, is a vocal artist, poet, composer, ecological activist, and mountain’s daughter. Bagby studied the nexus of belief and value systems, societal behavioral codes, and social change at Stanford Law School, from which she graduated in 1983. Her works articulate the challenges and joys of cultivating “homefulness:” restorative relationships between nature and culture. She’s contributed articles to several anthologies, including “Nature and the Human Spirit: Toward an Expanded Land Management Ethic” (Venture Publishing, State College, PA, 1995); “Circles of Strength: Community Alternatives to Alienation” (New Society Publishing, Phila., PA 1993); “Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism” (Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA 1990); and “Healing the Wounds” (New Society Publishing, Santa Cruz, CA: 1989).

Anne Bartley is President and Trustee of the Rockefeller Family Fund and a founding Board Member of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.

Leroy Little Bear is a member of the Small Robes Band of the Blood Indian Tribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy, born and raised on the Blood Indian Reserve. From 1975 to the end of 1996, Dr. Little Bear was a professor in the Native American Studies Department at the University of Lethbridge. In January of 1998 Dr. Little Bear became the Director of the Harvard University Native American Program. Dr. Little Bear has served in a legal and consultant capacity to many Indian Tribes, and organizations including the Blood Tribe, Indian Association of Alberta, and the Assembly of First Nations of Canada. His research interests include the study and comparison of Indigenous and Western sciences as pathways to knowledge.

Robert Coles is a child psychiatrist, professor at Harvard University, and author of more than fifty books. He is best known for his explorations of children’s lives and books that explore their moral, political, and spiritual sensibilities. He is also known as an eloquent spokesman for voluntary and community service–the subject of his recent book, A Call to Service. In addition, he has written literary criticism, numerous biographies, reviews, poetry, social commentary, several children’s books, and regular columns for the New Republic, New Oxford Review, and American Poetry Review.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-SENT-me high”), a Hungarian-born polymath and the Davidson Professor of Management at the Claremont Graduate University, in Claremont, California has been thinking about the meaning of happiness since a child in wartime Europe.

His research and theories in the psychology of optimal experience have revolutionized psychology, and have been adopted in practice by national leaders such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as well as top members of the global executive elite who run the world’s major corporations. Csikszentmihalyi is the author of several popular books about his theories, the bestselling Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience; The Evolving Self: A Psychology For The Third Millennium; Creativity; and Finding Flow. The Wall Street Journal has listed Flow among the six books “every well-stocked business library should have.”

Rev. Harlon Dalton is Emeritus Professor of Law at Yale Law School where he taught courses in Aids Law, law and theology, Civil procedure, law and psychology and critical race theory. He is also Assistant Rector of the Episcopal Church of Saint Paul and Saint James in New Haven, Connecticut where he is postulant for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church and Vice President of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company.

After receiving his A.B., from Harvard University (1969) and J.D., from Yale University (1973) Harlon’s professional commitment to combating discrimination began while serving as Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Robert L. Carter. Judge Carter is known for having provided council for the NAACP in the Brown vs. Board of Education trial. Harlon then worked for the Legal Action Center, a law and policy organization that fights discrimination against people with histories of addiction, AIDS, and criminal records (1973-79). Then, as Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States he helped to supervise and conduct government litigation in the United States Supreme Court (1979-1981). He has also worked for the Center for Legal Ed. And Urban Policy at CUNY (1979).

Harlon is a member of the Board of Directors of American Civil Liberties Union, Legal Action Center, and Legal Affairs. He is author of Racial Healing: Confronting the Fear between Blacks and Whites, 1995; AIDS Law Today: A New Guide for the Public (ed. With S. Burris and J.Mill), 1993; and AIDS and the Law (ed. with S. Burris), 1987.

Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) taught and conducted research at the Department of Social Relations and the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University from 1958 to 1963. While at Harvard, his explorations of human consciousness led him to conduct intensive research with LSD and other psychedelic elements in collaboration with Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, and others. Because of the controversial nature of this research, Ram Dass and Leary were dismissed from Harvard in 1963. Nonplused, he traveled to India’s Himalayas in 1967, studied yoga and meditation with guru Neem Karoli Baba, and transformed into Baba Ram Dass, or servant of God.

Since then, he has pursued a variety of spiritual practices and has written many books, including Be Here Now (1971) and Journey of Awakening (1990). In 1974, Ram Dass created the Hanuman Foundation, which has developed many projects, including the Prison-Ashram Project, designed to help inmates grow spiritually during incarceration. He also helped develop the “Living/Dying Project”, with Stephen Levine which provides support for the conscious dying. In 1978 Ram Dass co-founded and became a board member of the Seva Foundation, an international organization dedicated to relieving suffering in the world.

Ram Dass suffered a serious stroke in 1997 and is recovering. “The stroke made me aware of silence,” he said. “Of the vulnerability of my body…how fragile my faith is.” His latest book, Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying (2000), examines conscious aging. “The next message you need,” he advises, “is right where you are.”

Marian R. David is the director of Sustaining the Soul that Serves. She worked as a consultant with the Fetzer Institute from 1997 to 2000 to develop the project. Prior to this, she worked for six years with the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) as director of Freedom Schools; director of the CDF-Bennettsville, South Carolina Educational and Youth Leadership Development Project, and curriculum writer for Freedom Schools. In 1996, Marian was selected as a Community Fellow in the Department of Urban Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There she worked to develop a project to incorporate spiritual renewal practices into youth programs, which subsequently became the foundation for her current work. Marian has had over 12 years of experience in the public schools as a teacher, guidance and career counselor.

Richard Davidson is Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Research in his laboratory is focused on cortical and subcortical substrates of emotion and affective disorders, including depression and anxiety. He studies normal adults and young children, and those with, or at risk for, affective and anxiety disorders. He uses quantitative electrophysiology, positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to make inferences about patterns of regional brain function. A major focus of his current work is on interactions between prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in the regulation of emotion in both normal subjects and patients with affective and anxiety disorders.

He has published more than 250 articles, chapters and reviews, and has edited 13 books. Dr. Davidson was the founding co-editor of the new American Psychological Association journal, EMOTION, and is also past-president of the Society for Research in Psychopathology and of the Society for Psychophysiological Research.

In 2000, he was recipient of the most distinguished award for science given by the American Psychological Association – the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. In 2003 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2004 he was elected to the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2006. In 2006, he was also awarded the first Mani Bhaumik Award by UCLA for advancing the understanding of the brain and conscious mind in healing.

Michael Edwards is one of the world’s leading authorities on civil society and social change. He is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action in New York, a Senior Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at Manchester University in the UK. From 1999 to 2008 he was the Director of the Governance and Civil Society Program at the Ford Foundation in New York, and also co-founded the Seasons Fund for Social Transformation.

Prior to joining the Ford Foundation he was the World Bank’s Senior Adviser on Civil Society in Washington DC, where he led a program designed to improve the agency’s understanding of, and engagement with, a wide range of civic groups. Before moving to the World Bank, Michael spent 15 years as a senior manager in international relief and development NGOs, including periods with Oxfam-UK (as Regional Director for Southern Africa), and Save the Children-UK (as Director of Research, Evaluation and Advocacy). He has lived and worked in Colombia, Mexico, Zambia, Malawi, India, the UK and the USA.

Michael’s many books and articles have helped to shape our thinking about philanthropy, civil society, social transformation and international cooperation, and to break down barriers between researchers and activists across the world. He graduated from Oxford University with a congratulatory double-first and was awarded a PhD by the University of London for his work on low-income housing markets in Latin America. He lives with his wife Cora (a non-profit fundraising consultant) on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and in Swan Lake in upstate New York, where they are renovating one of the first houses built by settlers in Sullivan County.

Howard Gardner is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments. During the past fifteen years, he and colleagues at Project Zero have been working on the design of performance-based assessments, education for understanding, and the use of multiple intelligences to achieve more personalized curricula, instruction, and assessment. Most recently, Gardner has been carrying out intensive case studies of exemplary creators and leaders; he and colleagues on the Good Work Project have launched an investigation of the relationship between cutting-edge work in different domains and a sense of social responsibility. Gardner is also chairman of the steering committee of Project Zero and adjunct professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. Gardner is the author of eighteen books and several hundred articles.

Daniel Goleman consults internationally and lectures frequently. He is founder of Emotional Intelligence Services, an affiliate of the Hay Group in Boston. A psychologist who for many years reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times, Dr. Goleman’s 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books), argues that human competencies like self-awareness, self-discipline, persistence and empathy are of greater consequence than IQ in much of life, that we ignore the decline in these competencies at our peril, and that children can–and should–be taught these abilities. Emotional Intelligence was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half, with more than 5,000,000 copies in print and was translated into nearly 30 languages. Dr. Goleman is a co-founder of the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning at the Yale University Child Studies Center (now at the University of Illinois at Chicago), with the mission to help schools introduce emotional literacy courses. Dr. Goleman is co-chairman of The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University. Dr. Goleman has received two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize for his articles in the Times, and a Career Achievement award for journalism from the American Psychological Association. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Goleman received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in clinical psychology and personality development.

Amy Gross is the former editor-in-chief of O, the Oprah Magazine. Before joining O, The Oprah Magazine, Gross was a writer for a wide variety of magazines, including Good Housekeeping, Martha Stewart Living, Food & Wine, Talk, Mademoiselle and Modern Maturity, where she also served as an editorial consultant. From 1988-1993 she was a founding editor of Mirabella. She went on to serve as Mirabella‘s editor-in-chief from 1995-1997. She also concurrently served as editorial director of Elle magazine from 1993-1996, overseeing its redesign. Earlier, Gross was features editor and special projects editor of Vogue, where she worked for 10 years (1978-1988). With Dee Ito, she has co-authored two books: Women Talk about Breast Surgery: From Diagnosis to Recovery (1990) and Women Talk about Gynecological Surgery: From Diagnosis to Recovery (1991). Gross is also a student of meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg.

Paul Hawken is a business leader, environmentalist, and author. He is considered one of the leading architects and proponents of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices. Paul Hawken founded several natural foods companies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He went on to co-found Smith & Hawken, the retail and catalog company in 1979, Metacode, a content management software company, in 1995, and in 2000, Groxis, a software company providing enterprises and individuals information navigation, visualization, and organization capabilities. He has written such bestselling books as The Ecology of Commerce and Growing a Business. The latter became the basis of a PBS series that has aired in 115 countries. Paul Hawken served as co-chair of The Natural Step-International, a non-profit educational foundation whose purpose is to develop and share a common framework comprised of easily understood, scientifically based principles that can serve as a basis to move society toward sustainability. The Natural Step assists business and government leaders throughout the world in establishing a long-term commitment to environmental sustainability as a core part of their overall policies. He has served on the board of many environmental and nonprofit organizations, including Point Foundation (publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog), the Center for Plant Conservation, Conservation International, the Trust for Public Land, and the National Audubon Society.

Jon Kabat-Zinn is the founder of the nationally acclaimed Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. Since 1979, the clinic has served more than 11,000 patients in the form of an eight-week long course. Prominently featured in the Bill Moyers’ PBS special “Healing and the Mind” in 1993, the clinic and its research has continually demonstrated that most participants in its programs achieve long-lasting improvements in both physical and psychological symptoms, as well as major positive changes in health attitudes and behaviors. Kabat-Zinn is the author of the best-selling Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness and Wherever You Go, There You Are.

Michael Lerner is the president and founder of Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, California, near San Francisco. He is the co-founder with Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, a week-long residential support program for people with cancer, featured on Bill Moyers’ PBS series “Healing and the Mind.” He is also president and co-founder of Smith Farm, a center for the healing arts in Washington, D.C., which offers the Cancer Help Program on the East Coast.

Lerner is the author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer, from MIT Press. He is also deeply engaged with environment and health issues. A former member of the Yale faculty, he received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983. He also works with several foundations.

Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man is a writer, religious guide and spiritual counselor. He is founder and former president of Metivta: a center for contemplative Judaism, which is dedicated to the renewal of the Jewish wisdom tradition and to the deepening of personal religious quest. Metivta is a continuation of Jonathan Omer-Man’s life-long work as a guide and mentor to Jews who feel that their Judaic religious and spiritual needs have not been met within the traditional forms available to them.

He has lectured at universities, colleges, and seminaries throughout the United States. In 1990 he visited the Dalai Lama in India, a journey that was described in Rodger Kamenetz’ best-selling book, The Jew in the Lotus. His work and ideas are also described in some detail in Kamenetz’ most recent work, Stalking Elijah: Adventures with Today’s Jewish Mystical Masters. For more than 25 years Jonathan Omer-Man lived in Jerusalem, where he worked and studied with some of the greatest contemporary Jewish teachers–including Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz and Professor Gershom Scholem–and was editor and publisher of Shefa Quarterly, a prestigious journal of Jewish thought and study. He was also revising editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Among his published writings are numerous articles about spirituality and mysticism in the Jewish tradition, and some verse and fiction.

Dean Ornish, MD, is the founder, president, and director of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, where he holds the Safeway Chair. He is Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Ornish received his medical training from the Baylor College of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and the Massachusetts General Hospital. He received a B.A. in Humanities summa cum laude from the University of Texas in Austin, where he gave the baccalaureate address.

For the past 28 years, Dr. Ornish has directed clinical research demonstrating, for the first time, that comprehensive lifestyle changes may begin to reverse even severe coronary heart disease, without drugs or surgery. He is the author of five best-selling books, including New York Times’ bestsellers Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease, Eat More, Weigh Less, and Love & Survival. He recently directed the first randomized controlled trial demonstrating that comprehensive lifestyle changes may affect the progression of prostate cancer.

The research that he and his colleagues conducted has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, Circulation, The New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Cardiology, and elsewhere. A one-hour documentary of their work was broadcast on NOVA, the PBS science series, and was featured on Bill Moyers’ PBS series, Healing & The Mind. Their work has been featured in virtually all major media, including cover stories in Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report.

Dr. Ornish is a member of the boards of directors of the U.S. United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the Quincy Jones We Are the Future Foundation, and the Wheelchair Foundation. He was appointed to The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy and elected to the California Academy of Medicine.

He has received several awards, including the 1994 Outstanding Young Alumnus Award from the University of Texas, Austin, the Jan J. Kellermann Memorial Award for distinguished contribution in the field of cardiovascular disease prevention from the International Academy of Cardiology, the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, a Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association, the Beckmann Medal from the German Society for Prevention and Rehabilitation of Cardiovascular Diseases, and a U.S. Army Surgeon General Medal. Dr. Ornish has been a physician consultant to The White House and to several bipartisan members of the U.S. Congress. He is listed in Who’s Who in Healthcare and Medicine, Who’s Who in America, and Who’s Who in the World.

Dr. Ornish was recognized as “one of the most interesting people of 1996” by People magazine, featured in the “TIME 100” issue on alternative medicine, and chosen by LIFE magazine as “one of the 50 most influential members of his generation.”

Charles Terry is currently President of Terry-MacGregor Associates, Vice Chairman of the Whidbey Institute and Director of the Project on Wealth and Philanthropy, and an Associate of Family Philanthropy Advisors. He was formerly Director of Philanthropy at the Rockefeller Family Office and Rockefeller Financial Services in New York City, and as President of The Philanthropic Collaborative, a public charity developed by the family office to promote and facilitate philanthropy for individuals and families. In these positions, he was responsible for advising and overseeing approximately $60 million of grantmaking annually.

Charles has had extensive experience in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, serves and has served as a trustee and advisor to a number of charitable trusts, foundations and nonprofit boards, has served as Chairman of the Council on Foundations Annual Family Foundations Conference, was a director of the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, and has been a speaker, consultant, and facilitator at conferences, professional meetings, family and foundation meetings.

Prior to his work with the Rockefeller family, Mr. Terry was Vice President of the International Center for Integrative Studies, a nonprofit organization promoting greater communication and collaboration among leaders in diverse disciplines, and served as an ICIS delegate to the United Nations. Prior to that, he helped to found and served for 10 years as the Executive Director of The Door – A Center of Alternatives, an internationally recognized multi-service health, education and arts center for youth, serving 5,000 inner city teenagers annually.

Charles is an honors graduate of both Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. Following law school, he practiced law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison in New York City, and subsequently practiced urban, community and poverty law in New York. For eight years he was a Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, where he founded and directed the Urban Law Clinical Program.

Robert A. F. Thurman holds the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West, the Jey Tsong Khapa Chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. After education at Philips Exeter and Harvard, he studied Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism for almost thirty years as a personal student of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He has written both scholarly and popular books, and has lectured widely all over the world. His special interest is the exploration of the Indo-Tibetan philosophical and psychological traditions, with a view to their relevance to parallel currents of contemporary thought and science.

Dr. Andrew Weil is a leader in the integration of Western medicine and the exploding field of alternative medicine. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he teaches at the University of Arizona in Tucson, specializing in alternative medicine, mind/body interactions and medical botany. He is the founder of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center in Tucson, where he is training a new generation of physicians. Dr. Weil is the author of seven books: The Natural Mind (1972), The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon (1980), From Chocolate to Morphine (with Winifred Rosen, 1983), Health and Healing (1984), Natural Health, Natural Medicine (1990), Spontaneous Healing (1995) and his most recent best-seller, 8 Weeks to Optimum Health.