Alan ‘Abd al-Haqq Godlas, PhD, is authorized to teach Sufi contemplative practice in the Shadhili tradition of Sidi Shaykh Muhammad al-Jamal of Jerusalem and the naqshbandi tradition of Hazret Ibrahim Jan of Kokand, Uzbekistan. He has been practicing both American and traditional Islamic forms of Sufism since 1973. First initiated into Sufism in the Chishti tradition of Hazrat Inayat Khan through the lineage of Murshid Sam Lewis, Dr. Godlas subsequently encountered the naqshbandi-Shattari Sufi way, as taught by Idris Shah, through study under Dr. Claudio naranjo. From 1974 to 1977, he lived and practiced in the nimatullahi Sufi center in Tehran. He received his PhD, concentrating in Islamic Studies and Sufism, from the University of California–Berkeley in 1991, and began teaching as a professor of Religion, Islamic Studies, and Arabic at the University of Georgia. In addition to teaching at numerous Sufi and Islamic venues, he has taught and lectured about contem- plative Sufi practice at the Sivananda Yoga ashram in the Bahamas as well as at the Tibetan Buddhist Mangalam Center in Berkeley. His current research investigates resources of the world’s religions (in particular, Islam) for enhancing emotional intelligence. as a part of this work, Dr. Godlas became autho- rized to test emotional intelligence by David Caruso of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. He has delivered scholarly papers about Sufism in 14 countries, including Turkey, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, egypt and Morocco. Dr. Godlas’ website, “Sufism, Sufis, and Sufi orders: Sufism’s Many Paths” is the leading comprehensive academic website for Sufism.

Mohammed Hamid Mohammed is a senior program officer at the Fetzer Institute. Trained in the humanities, social science, and human-computer interaction, Mohammed is a philanthropy professional with decades of experience leading research, technology development, and programmatic projects around the world. He has worked in the academic and the corporate sectors before transitioning to philanthropy.

John Dunne’s work focuses on Buddhist philosophy and contemplative practice, especially in dialog with Cognitive Science. His publications range from technical works on Buddhist epistemology to broader works on the nature of Buddhist contemplative practices such as Mindfulness. He speaks in both academic and public contexts, and he occasionally teaches for Buddhist communities, most notably the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe. In addition to serving as a faculty member for the Center for Healthy Minds, he is a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute. Dunne also serves an academic advisor for the Ranjung Yeshe Institute.

Dunne served on the Mind & Life Board of Directors from 2007 to 2009.

Partap S. Khalsa, DC, PhD, is the Deputy Director for the Division of extramural research, national Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (nCCIH), national Institutes of Health (nIH). nCCIH is the lead federal agency for funding research on complementary health approaches and their integration into the healthcare system. The Division of extramural research oversees a broad portfolio of research ranging from basic and mechanistic studies to clinical trials of complementary health approaches. Prior to becoming the Deputy Director of the Division, Dr. Khalsa was a Program Director overseeing a portfolio of research related to studies of neuroscience, chronic pain, spine and soft-tissue biomechanics, and treatment thereof using mind-and-body approaches as well as natural products. Prior to joining nIH, he was a tenured associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the State University of new york (SUny) at Stony Brook, where he had a research laboratory funded by research grants from federal (nIH), state (n.y.), and private biomedical foundations (Whitaker Foundation). At SUny Stony Brook, he served as the Graduate Program Director and Vice-Chair of the Department of Biomedical engineering. His clinical training is in chiropractic (LACC, 1979) and he is board-certified in chiropractic orthopaedics (1994). He founded and directed two private holistic care clinics (1980 – 1997). He received a MS (Boston University, 1992) and PhD (WPI, 1995) in Biomedical Engineering/Sciences.

Lizabeth Roemer, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts–Boston. She regularly provides clinical supervision to beginning and advanced clinicians, in addition to providing expert consultation in mindfulness- and acceptance-based behavioral therapies, with an emphasis on treating anxiety and related disorders in numerous settings. Dr. Roemer has an active, productive research career, and has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters, and co-editing two books on the role of emotion regulation, mindfulness and experiential avoidance in anxiety and other disorders, and the use of mindfulness- and acceptance-based behavioral therapies. In collaboration with Dr. Susan Orsillo, she has developed an acceptance-based behavioral therapy for generalized anxiety and comorbid disorders—which incorporates mindfulness skills—and examined its efficacy and mediators and moderators of change in studies funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Drs. Roemer and Orsillo are co-authors of the books Mindfulness- and Acceptance-Based Behavioral Therapies in Practice; The Mindful Way Through Anxiety; and Worry Less, Live More, all published by Guilford Press.

Jud Brewer MD, PhD (“Dr. Jud”) is a New York Times best-selling author and thought leader in the field of habit change and the “science of self-mastery,” having combined over 25 years of experience with mindfulness training with his scientific research. He is Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and associate professor in Behavioral and Social Sciences and Psychiatry at the Schools of Public Health & Medicine at Brown University. He is also the executive medical director of behavioral health at Sharecare Inc. A psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for addictions, Jud has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and anxiety. He has also studied the underlying neural mechanisms of mindfulness using standard and real-time fMRI and EEG neurofeedback. His work has been featured on 60 Minutes, TED, the New York Times, Time magazine (top 100 new health discoveries of 2013), Forbes, BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera (documentary about his research), Businessweek, and others. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, among others. 

Jud founded MindSciences (which merged with Sharecare Inc. in 2020) to move his discoveries of clinical evidence behind mindfulness for anxiety, eating, smoking, and other behavior change into the hands of consumers. He is the author of The Craving Mind: from cigarettes to smartphones to love, why we get hooked and how we can break bad habits and the New York Times best-seller, Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind.

Rev. Rakafumi Kawakami is the deputy head priest of Shunkoin Temple in Kyoto and teaches Zen meditation classes in English to the 5,000 – 5,500 annual visitors to the temple. The participants include various business school groups, including HBS, IESE, Sloan, etc. He co-organizes and co-hosts long-term study abroad programs in Kyoto with Bryn Mawr College, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of Oregon and more. He also teaches Japanese hospitality classes to employees from the sales and marketing departments of Toyota’s global offices; and in conjunction with a disease-prevention specialist, holds corporate wellness seminars and workshops for several corpora- tions in Japan and developed a mindfulness smart phone application, Myalo. In addition, He is an LGBT rights supporter, and the temple is the first Buddhist temple in Japan that publicly started offering same-sex wedding ceremonies. He has been a member of the U.S.–Japan Leadership Program, hosted by the U.S.–Japan Foundation, since 2008.