Tony Chambers is the Director of Equity, Inclusion and Innovation at the Center for Healthy Minds. Tony also serves as a Senior Instructor in the department of Counseling Psychology for the Art and Science of Human Flourishing course. He was most recently the Associate Director of the WCER Network in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Tony was appointed and currently serves on the Wisconsin State Superintendent’s Equity Stakeholder Council, and the Midwest Achievement Gap Research Alliance (MAGRA).

Prior to working at the University of Wisconsin, Tony was the Vice President for Student Development and Dean of Students at Edgewood College in Madison Wisconsin. Before moving to Madison in 2016, Tony was the Chairperson for Leadership, Higher and Adult Education Department, Associate Professor of Higher Education and Founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Students in Postsecondary Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)/University of Toronto. During his time in Toronto, Tony also served as Program Coordinator of the Higher Education Program at OISE and the Associate Vice-Provost, Students at the University of Toronto. Tony served as the founding Associate Director of the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Michigan.

In addition to his work at the University of Wisconsin, he has served as a senior administrator and/or faculty member at several higher education institutions including Michigan State University, University of Iowa, University of Missouri-St. Louis, University of Florida and Illinois State University. He researched and taught in the areas of college student learning, development and success, as well as the social purposes of postsecondary education. Tony also served as a program officer and founding director of the Fellows and Senior Scholars Program at the Fetzer Institute in Michigan. Tony has been awarded several fellowships, including the Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Fellowship and the Salzburg Seminar Fellowship, and served on several domestic and international boards and councils focusing on higher education and civic engagement. He has been invited to make presentations at conferences and meetings internationally, and has published widely in various professional journals and edited books.

His publications include the co-edited book, Higher Education for the Public Good: Emerging Voices from a National Movement (Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2005).

J Miles, is a yoga teacher, space holder, and community leader, who has been dancing to the rhythm of life since childhood. He has been learning and studying martial arts, yoga and eastern philosophy for over two decades. His style of teaching has been crafted over the years by real life experience, humor, yoga philosophy, and the importance of breath as a guide and a source of strength. His classes aim to create for each person a fluid, sustainable and enjoyable practice that proves to be beneficial over a lifetime.

J is a Virginia Native, from rural New Kent County, Va . He currently lives in Richmond, spending time loving family and friends, gardening, and working to improve the lives of the people in the community. He is the co-founder and CEO of Project Yoga Richmond (PYR), and the creator of the Maha Vira Yoga Mindfulness and Leadership training (Maha Vira Yoga, LLC). He continues to partner with other leaders in the wellness community for positive change in the world.

Te Martin (they/them) is a song-keeper and ritual artist based on Southern Pomo, Graton Rancheria, and Me-Wuk land in sebastopol, california. They facilitate oral tradition singing classes and workshops that focus on song as a tool for collective liberation, somatic regulation, and ancestral connection. Te holds a B.A. in Theology from St. Louis University, is a student of Gaelic song, and released their first professional music video and EP of original songs, “Water & Bones”, in 2021.

Dr. Alea Skwara is a Postdoctoral Scholar in Dr. Cliff Saron’s research group at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain. She completed her PhD in Psychology, specializing in Cognitive Neuroscience, with Dr. Saron in 2021. Her research explores the neurocognitive bases of compassion and responses to suffering to better understand how we can cultivate our ability to be with suffering in adaptive ways.

To this end, Alea’s work brings together a variety of methodological approaches–including brain electrophysiology, peripheral nervous system activity, eyetracking, and self-report and behavioral measures–to better understand how individuals respond to suffering, and how meditation training may relate to the development of compassion for oneself and for others.

She is particularly interested in how scientific research on compassion can be applied in real-world contexts and policy-making to build a more just and thriving society, with immigration justice as a core area of personal priority. This includes a collaboration with Prof. Raquel Aldana at UC Davis School of Law that brings together legal and mental health academic faculty, and clinical practitioners working with immigrants and trauma to bridge the legal/scientific gap in immigration cases.

As a whole, Alea’s goal is to contribute to our collective understanding of the psychological and societal factors that support compassionate responses to suffering, and how these may be applied to build a more just and equitable world.

Dr. Pittman is an Associate Professor in the American Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Washington (UW). She received her Ph.D. in Sociology at Northwestern University. Before coming to the UW, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Poverty Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Georgia State University. In 2011, she completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Research and Training Program on Poverty and Public Policy at the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Dr. Pittman is currently focused on three distinct, but interrelated aspects of grandparent caregiving. Her forthcoming book, Grandmothering While Black: A Twenty-First Century Story of Love, Coercion and Survival will be published with the University of California Press (May 2023). She was awarded a Simpson Center Society of Scholars Fellowship, Royalty Research Fund, and a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship for junior faculty to complete her second book manuscript, tentatively titled I’m Not Going to Always Be Here: Black Grandmothering from Slavery through the Great Migration. Her scholarship has been published in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals and edited volumes. She is also working on a project that examines and intervenes on the health disparities experienced by grandparent caregivers and uses social and biomedical science approaches. Several institutions have funded Dr. Pittman’s work, including the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Northwestern University, Hiram College, and the UW.

Broadly, Dr. Pittman’s research examines the coping experiences of socially marginalized women. Her other research interests include social stratification and inequality; urban poverty; race and ethnicity; gender and families; research methods; public policy; and health disparities.

Inspired by the work of the South African Scholar Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Mays Imad is interested in studying the notion of “reparative humanism,” and what it means to become a flourishing human being and to contribute to intergenerational wellbeing. Mays focuses that question on her work within the academy working with students and colleagues to understand how trauma, including intergenerational trauma, shows up within postsecondary education. 

Specifically she asks: When we are confronted with intersecting crises, how do institutions balance their mission of education with the fact that many of their students and employees are experiencing chronic, if not traumatic, levels of stress and burnout? Why is it imperative not to ignore the shadow of trauma and to leverage the power of meaningful relationships to create conditions for healing, learning and transformation. 

Within that overarching theme, Mays investigates the following questions: 1) How to use what we know about the neurobiology of learning to optimize conditions for learning for all students? 2) How to create structural immunity that helps cultivate equitable and healthy ecosystems? 3) How to use our positionality to advocate for readily accessible and culturally-grounded mental health support for all students?

Learn more about her work here

Anu Gupta is a human rights lawyer, social scientist, educator, and the Founder of BE MORE with Anu. He is also a gay immigrant man of color with lived experiences of bias and bullying that almost led him to take his life. But he didn’t. Instead, he dedicated himself to find solutions to bias through two decades of original research, fieldwork with diverse communities globally, and 10,000 hours of meditation practice.

A peer-reviewed author and the principal investigator behind BE MORE’s research, he secured highly competitive grants from institutions like the National Science Foundation, NYS Health Foundation, American Heart Association, among others, to validate BE MORE’s science-backed, meditation-driven method to break bias. He has written and spoken extensively, including on the TED stage, the Oprah Conversation, Fast Company, and Newsweek.

Anu worked as an attorney, a research scientist, and a teacher in the United States, Europe, and Asia, prior to founding BE MORE. He is a trained meditation and yoga teacher (500-hours) and is a living testament of the power of these ancient sciences to transform inner and external turmoil. His meditations can be found on the Insight Timer, Open, and the Ten Percent Happier meditation apps.

Anu obtained his JD from NYU Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar, an MPhil in Development Studies from Cambridge University, and a BA (summa cum laude) in Int’l Relations, Islamic Studies & Chemistry from NYU. He also serves as a Systems Designer for Dickinson Law’s Antiracist Development Institute (ADI). He has served as a Board Member for the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (BCBS) and The Middle Collegiate Church’s Middle Project.

Follow @bemorewithanu or learn more at bemorewithanu.com.

Dr. Cortland Dahl is a scientist, translator, and non-profit leader with a lifelong interest in meditation and the science of human flourishing. His journey began in the early 1990s when he first learned to meditate. His passion for training the mind led him on a journey around the world, from monasteries in Tibet to zendos in Japan, culminating in eight years living in Tibetan refugee settlements on the outskirts of Kathmandu.

During his time in Asia, he became fluent in Tibetan and became a prolific translator and scholar, receiving a master’s degree in Buddhist studies and publishing twelve volumes of translations, including ancient meditation manuals and treatises on Buddhist philosophy.

During these years he also co-founded Tergar with Mingyur Rinpoche, a global network of meditation communities on six continents. He currently serves on the board of directors and as Executive Director of Tergar International, the non-profit organization that oversees the Tergar community. He is also a senior meditation instructor and offers workshops and meditation retreats around the world.

Cortland studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was mentored by Dr. Richard Davidson and received a Ph.D. in Mind, Brain, and Contemplative Science, the first ever degree of its kind awarded by the university. He has since published numerous scientific articles, including a new scientific framework for the cultivation of human flourishing, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Cortland is also the creator of the Healthy Minds Program, a freely available a mobile app that was recently recommended by the New York Times as one of three recommended meditation apps. The Healthy Minds Program app has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and is now being used scientific research by some of the leading research centers in the world.

Cortland currently lives with his wife and son in Madison, Wisconsin.

Emery N. Brown, M.D., Ph.D. is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT; the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School; and an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

He received his B.A. in Applied Mathematics (magna cum laude) from Harvard College, his M.A. and Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University and his M.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Medical School. Professor Brown completed his internship in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his anesthesiology residency at MGH.

Professor Brown is an anesthesiologist-statistician whose research is defining the neuroscience of how anesthetics produce the states of general anesthesia. He also develops statistical methods for neuroscience data analysis.

Professor Brown is a fellow of the IEEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering.

Professor Brown has received an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, the Sacks Prize from the National Institute of Statistical Science, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Applied Mathematics, the American Society of Anesthesiologists Excellence in Research Award, the Dickson Prize in Science, the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, the Pierre Galletti Award, the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience, and a Doctor of Science Honoris Causa from the University of Southern California.