CMind Announces New Executive Director
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 28, 2021
Media Contact:
Carrie Bergman, Associate Director
carrie@carriecontemplativemind.org
THE CENTER FOR CONTEMPLATIVE MIND IN SOCIETY (CMIND) ANNOUNCES NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Dr. David W. Robinson-Morris will begin his appointment on November 1
Florence, MA—The Board of Directors of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (CMind) is pleased to announce the unanimous selection of David W. Robinson-Morris, Ph.D. in early October as its next executive director. This announcement follows an extensive search for a strategic and visionary leader, contemplative scholar, and champion for CMind. Robinson-Morris will begin his appointment on November 1 in a part-time capacity while maintaining his consultancy.
“The CMind board of directors is honored to welcome Dr. Robinson-Morris as our new executive director. We are thrilled that he has decided to join us and we look forward to his leadership,” announced CMind Board President Dr. Michelle Chatman. “David is a scholar, deep practitioner, successful developer, and visionary who will help us to strategically reimagine our work of love and justice in the world.”
Dr. Robinson-Morris is the author of Ubuntu and Buddhism in Higher Education: An Ontological (Re)Thinking published by Routledge in 2018. As a scholar, Dr. Robinson-Morris’ work centers on deepening our understanding of what it means to be a human being through the philoso-praxes of Ubuntu and socially engaged Buddhism. The intertwining of these philosophies, he believes, promotes deep dialogical engagement; and the intra-action with humanity and the more-than-human, nature, and Spirit to transform our understanding of what we are not yet but must become.
In energetic alignment with CMind, human flourishing and systemic transformation can only be realized when we come to understand humanity as a collective endeavor and a quality that we owe to one another. Dr. Robinson-Morris achieves this understanding through educational engagement, cognitive disruption, imagination, and rhizomatic contemplative practice—what he terms an onto-educational philosophy.
Founder of CMind and senior fellow Mirabai Bush remarked, “The Center welcomes David Robinson-Morris with great appreciation for the gifts of leadership, insight, and experience that he will bring to the position of Executive Director. As director of an organization committed to creating a more just and compassionate society through the integration of contemplative practices and perspectives, his contemplative experience is especially important.”
“He is a thoughtful and visionary educator. He brings a capacity for deep listening, compassionate presence, and openness to innovative and experimental approaches to change as well as a true commitment to social and racial justice,” continued Bush, who is also a member of the CMind Board of Directors. “He will lead at a time of rich opportunity for the Center, building upon its ground-breaking work in the integration of contemplative practices and social justice in American institutions and professions.”
Dr. Robinson-Morris is the founder and chief reimaginelutionary at The REImaginelution, LLC, a strategic consulting firm working at the intersections of imagination, policy, practice, and prophetic hope to radically reimagine diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) toward racial justice and systemic transformation by engendering freedom of the human spirit; and catalyzing the power of the imagination to reweave organizations, systems, and the world for collective healing and liberation.
Most recently, Dr. Robinson-Morris served as the regional director of Diversity and Inclusion in the Bayou Region for Ochsner Health System in Louisiana. He is the founding director of The Center for Equity, Justice, and the Human Spirit at Xavier University of Louisiana, which was developed in 2018 to engage, support, and promote innovative thinking in a multiplicity of contexts and across disciplines regarding race, class, systemic inequities; and a faith that does justice toward a deeper understanding of issues impacting modern societies and vexing the human spirit. This work has focused on impacting policy, improving practice, and uplifting the human spirit within the areas of PK-16 educational equity, criminal justice reform, and environmental justice. Concurrently, he served as an assistant professor in the Division of Education and Counseling and as the assistant vice president of development in Institutional Advancement at Xavier University of Louisiana.
Dr. Robinson-Morris is eager to begin the work of transformation in generative collaboration with the CMind board of directors and staff. He looks forward to engaging CMind membership in enlargening the imaginative visions of our collective work in the promotion of contemplative practice and compassionate action. He will work remotely while residing in New Orleans.
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Founded in the early 1990s, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (CMind) is a global community of contemplative practitioners whose goal is the ongoing development of racial, social, economic, and environmental justice and the advancement of human flourishing. Our goal is to transform the human legacy of oppression and exploitation in efforts to create a new paradigm for coexistence and development through teaching and learning diverse contemplative practices.
The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE), a program of CMind, focuses on increasing contemplative insight and action in the realm of higher education.
For more information, please visit www.contemplativemind.org.