Anthony Phillips, Ph.D., has expertise in brain function and behavior. He was Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (2009–2017), Founding Director of the University of British Columbia (UBC) Institute of Mental Health, and is currently professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Senior Investigator with the UBC Djavad Mohafhagian Centre for Brain Health. Phillips’ research focuses on the neural bases of learning and memory and has contributed to better treatment of addiction and mental health. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Phillips has received numerous awards including the Heinz Lehmann Award from the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the Bill and Marilynn Weber Lifetime Achievement Award from the UBC Faculty of Medicine. In 2015, he became a member of the Order of Canada.
Jennifer Knox is an educator with over 18 years experience in the United States, Europe, and Asia. As a member of the core Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning (SEE) team at Emory University, she has been central to the development of the curriculum since its first steps in 2015. She serves as a SEE Learning education consultant, curriculum designer, teacher training facilitator, and liaison with partner schools. As a certified Cognitive Based Compassion Training (CBCT) instructor, Jen has worked to incorporate CBCT into educational settings, including formal research studies at an International Baccalaureate charter school and at the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has also taught CBCT to students at Emory University and to faculty in Atlanta Public Schools. For 12 years, she has taught visual art at Woodward Academy where she teaches a SEE Learning Course and coordinates with senior administrators, counselors, and faculty to align SEE Learning initiatives academy-wide.
Tara Wilkie, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology with a special focus on understanding different learning profiles. She has been a researcher, a classroom resource teacher, a special education consultant, a school psychologist, and a university lecturer. Wilkie’s research has focused on the use of computers as cognitive tools and the application of metacognitive learning strategies. Her clinical experience includes working with children and adolescents both in the classroom and in specialized settings.
Since 2015, Wilkie has been the Director of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) at the Peace Grantmakers Network (PGN), a group of philanthropic foundations, individual donors, and partner organizations working collaboratively in applied peace efforts and social harmony initiatives. As the director of SEL at PGN as well as its key resource facilitator, Wilkie has been actively involved in the development of such applied peace initiatives as “Les Grandes Rencontres.” She also helped organize two key symposia for educators: “Creating Caring School Communities: Social Emotional Learning & Bullying Prevention” (February 2014) and “Research Meets Practice: Effective Tools to Prevent Bullying” (November 2014). Wilkie’s current focus is in the area of SEL, bullying prevention, and creating caring school communities.
Wilkie co-developed “Ma Classe Zone de Paix,” a non-violent, communicationbased SEL school program. Since 2009, she has been teaching this program in French two days a week at École Bussonière, a primary school in Montréal. She also offers workshops and training on SEL for teachers, parents, and school boards and maintains a private practice. Wilkie is the co-founder, with Sophie Boyer Langri, of the Institute of Social Emotional Education and the co-author of CS3, a K–8 curriculum. She lives in Montréal with her husband and two daughters.
Sophie Langri, M.A., holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies and Anthropology from Montréal University and an M.A. in Sociology and Politics of Development from the University of Cambridge, England. She has been the project manager for the Institute of Tibetan Classics since 1999. Since 2003, Langri has been a regular attendee at the biannual Mind & Life International Symposium for Contemplative Research and the in-depth dialogues between the Dalai Lama and scientists and scholars interested in the study of the human mind and its potentials. Her participation in these conferences has enabled her to interact with neuroscientists, psychologists, and educators who are passionate about translating important scientific insights into the domain of education. In addition, Langri has received extensive training in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) as well as Restorative Justice methods. Combining her NVC background with what she has learned through years of interaction with scientists in the field of brain and learning, in 2008 Langri created and began Ma Classe Zone de Paix, a school program teaching social and emotional learning (SEL) for children ages 5–12. For this innovative school program, Langri was awarded the YMCA Québec Peace Medal in 2010. She is currently working as an SEL consultant with the Ministry of Education Québec for the Grandes Rencontres project, which will give information to all school regions about SEL throughout Québec. She is currently also in the process of receiving her certification as a Stanford Compassion Cultivation Training instructor. Langri is the co-founder, along with Tara Wilkie, of the Institute of Social Emotional Education and the co-author of CS3, a K-8 curriculum. She lives in Montréal with her husband and two daughters.
Kimberly Schonert-Reichl is an applied developmental psychologist and a professor in the Human Development, Learning, and Culture area in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She is also the director of the Human Early Learning Partnership in the School of Population and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. She began her career as a middle school teacher and then was a teacher for “at risk” adolescents in an alternative high school. She received her master’s from the University of Chicago and her doctorate from the University of Iowa. She was a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow in the Clinical Research Training Program in Adolescence at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry.
For more than two decades, her research has focused on the social and emotional development of children and adolescents in school and community settings.
Daniel Goleman, best known for his worldwide bestseller “Emotional Intelligence,” is most recently co-author of “Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body.” A meditation practitioner since his college days, Goleman spent two years in India, first as a Harvard Predoctoral Traveling Fellow and then on a postdoctoral fellowship. Goleman’s first book, “The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience,” is written on the basis of that research, offering an overview of various meditation paths. Goleman has moderated several Mind & Life Dialogues between the Dalai Lama and scientists, ranging from topics such as “Emotions and Health” to “Environment, Ethics and Interdependence.” Goleman’s 2014 book, “A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World,” combines the Dalai Lama’s key teachings, empirical evidence, and true accounts of people putting his lessons into practice, offering readers guidance for making the world a better place. Having worked with leaders, teachers, and groups around the globe, Goleman has transformed the way the world educates children, relates to family and friends, and conducts business.
Goleman is a Founding Steward of the Mind & Life Institute. He served on the Mind & Life Board of Directors from 1990 to 2017.
Yuki Imoto teaches anthropology in the liberal arts program at Keio University’s Faculty of Science and Technology. She completed her doctorate degree in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Oxford, where she also worked as a research associate at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. She has conducted fieldwork in multi- cultural, transnational, and alternative spaces of education within Japan, and has published numerous articles and books on this topic, relating her fieldwork experience to her own background of growing up biculturally. More recently, Yuki has been focusing her work on cross-cultural experiences/understandings of contemplative pedagogy, particularly in American and Japanese higher education. Between 2017 and 2018, she was based at Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley as a Fulbright scholar, and conducted ethnographic fieldwork on contemplative education in several American universities and other spaces of learning, including the Mind & Life Institute.
Imoto currently collaborates with a number of contemplative scholars, anthropologists, community activists and artists in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, and is designing a liberal arts program that integrates first-, second- and third-person approaches into learning, teaching, and research.
