Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (in 1995), and (in 1979) its world-renown Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic.  He is the author of ten books, including the bestsellers Full Catastrophe Living, Wherever You Go, There You Are, and Mindfulness for Beginners.  With Mark Williams, he is co-editor of Mindfulness: Diverse Perspectives on its Meaning, Origins, and Applications (2013).  His books are published in over 40 languages.  His work has contributed to a growing movement of mindfulness into mainstream institutions such as medicine, psychology, health care, neuroscience, schools, higher education, business, social justice, criminal justice, prisons, the law, technology, government, and professional sports. Over 700 hospitals and medical centers around the world now offer clinical programs based on training in mindfulness and MBSR.  Jon lectures and leads mindfulness workshops and retreats around the world.

Jon previously served on the Mind & Life Board of Directors.

 

Prof. Jennings is a Professor of Education at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. She is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of social and emotional learning and mindfulness in education with a specific emphasis on teacher stress and how it impacts the social and emotional context of the classroom. Jennings led the team that developed CARE for Teachers, a mindfulness-based professional development program that improves teacher well-being, emotional supportiveness and student engagement in the largest randomized controlled trial of a mindfulness-based intervention designed specifically to address teacher occupational stress. Jennings is leading the development of the Compassionate Schools Project curriculum, an integrated health education program designed to align with state and national health and physical education standards. She is Co-Principal Investigator on a large randomized controlled trial being conducted in Louisville, KY to evaluate the curriculum’s efficacy. Jennings was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development among Children and Youth. Dr. Jennings was recognized by Mindful Magazine as one of “Ten Mindfulness Researchers You Should Know.” Earlier in her career, Jennings spent over 22 years as a teacher, school director and teacher educator. She is the author of Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom and The Trauma-Sensitive Classroom: Building Resilience with Compassionate Teaching, both part of the WW Norton Series on the Social Neuroscience of Education.

Called “the most intriguing African-American Buddhist” by Library Journal, Rev. angel Kyodo williams Sensei, is an author, maverick spiritual teacher, master trainer, and founder of Center for Transformative Change. She has been bridging the worlds of personal transformation and justice since the publication of her critically acclaimed book, Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace. Her book was hailed as “an act of love” by Pulitzer Prize-winner Alice Walker and “a classic” by Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. Her new co-authored book, Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love & Liberation, is igniting communities—Buddhist, activist, and beyond—to have the conversations necessary to become more awake and aware of what hinders liberations of self and society. The Radical Dharma events that have emerged from the book: Connections, Circles and Conversations, have initiated profound healing and deepened commitment, dismantling oppression across lines of race, class, sexual orientation, and other divides.

Ordained as a Zen priest, she is a Sensei, the second of only five black women recognized as teachers in the Japanese Zen lineage. She is a social visionary that applies wisdom teachings and embodied practice to intractable social issues at the intersections where race, climate, and economic justice meet. She coined the name for the field of Transformative Social Change and sees it as America’s next great movement. In recognition of her work, Rev. angel received the first Creating Enlightened Society Award from the international Shambhala Community.

For over 20 years, she has deeply invested her time and energy to putting into practice her unwavering belief that the key to transforming society is transforming our inner lives. She has developed comprehensive systems for illuminating both practical personal change and the profoundly liberating potential of mindfulness, yoga, and somatic practices coupled with wisdom teachings. Calling for a paradigm shift that “changes the way change is done,” angel envisions the building of a presence-centered social justice movement as the foundation for personal freedom, a just society, and the healing of divisions of race, class, faith, and politic.

Both fierce and grounded, she is known for her unflinching willingness to both sit with and speak uncomfortable truths with love. Her work has been widely covered by such publications as The New York Times, the Boston Globe, Ms., Essence, Buddhadharma, and the podcast “On Being with Krista Tippett.” angel notes, “Love and justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.”

Dr. Eric Garland, PhD, LCSW is Distinguished Endowed Chair in Research and Distinguished Professor in the University of Utah College of Social Work and Director of the Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development (C-MIIND). As Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator, Dr. Garland has published over 185 scientific articles and received more than $60 million in research grants to develop and test therapies for addiction, stress, and pain, including Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE). In a bibliometric analysis published in 2021, Dr. Garland was found to be the most prolific author of research on mindfulness in the world.

www.drericgarland.com 

Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Cultural, Medical and Psychological Anthropology at Emory University. She received her D. Phil. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Oxford University in 2001. Following that, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard’s Department of Social Medicine, and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago. She is a recipient of an NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Fellowship and a Mind and Life Contemplative Studies Fellowship. Her research focuses on cross-cultural understandings of health and illness, especially mental well-being, and her work brings Western and Asian (particularly Japanese and Tibetan) perspectives on the mind-body, contemplative practices, religion, and therapy into dialogue. Her recent research has examined the Japanese contemplative practice of Naikan, secularized contemplative practices in the US, Tibetan medicine, loneliness and suicide. Her publications include one monograph, Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan: The Japanese Introspection Practice of Naikan (Routledge, 2006), and several published journal articles and book chapters both in English and Japanese. 

Fadel Zeidan (2023 SRI PPC Co-Chair)  is an associate professor in the Department of Anesthesiology. He currently holds leadership positions in the UCSD Center for Integrative Health, UCSD Psychedelic Research Health Initiative, and is on the Mind & Life Steering Council, and is an MLI Fellow. Fadel’s current research is focused on determining the psychological, physiological and neural mechanisms that mediate the relationship between self-regulatory practices and health. Specifically, Fadel’s work examines the mechanisms of action supporting mindfulness meditation on pain. To date, he and his team have demonstrated that mindfulness meditation is mechanistically distinct from and more effective than placebo, distraction, and relaxation.

Judith Simmer-Brown, Ph.D., is distinguished professor of contemplative and religious studies at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she is a founding faculty member. She is head of the Compassion Training Task Force for the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education at Naropa, and serves as one of the compassion trainers. As Buddhist practitioner since the early 1970s, Simmer-Brown became a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1974, and was empowered as an acharya (senior teacher) by his dharma heir, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, in 2000.

Her academic teaching specialties are contemplative studies, Indian Buddhist philosophy, tantric Buddhism, and interreligious dialogue. She co-chairs the Contemplative Studies Steering Committee for the American Academy of Religion, and serves on the board of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. Her book, Dakini’s Warm Breath (Shambhala 2001), explores the feminine principle as it reveals itself in meditation practice and everyday life for women and men. She also co-edited Meditation and the Classroom: Contemplative Pedagogy for Religious Studies (SUNY 2011), that inventively demonstrates how contemplative practices can be introduced into the university classroom, and what the benefits are for learning.

 

Sona Dimidjian, PhD is Director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her current research projects focus on preventing depression and supporting wellness among new and expectant mothers, promoting healthy body image and leadership among young women, and enhancing mindfulness and compassion among youth, families, and educators. She also has a longstanding interest in expanding access, scaling, and sustaining effective programs, using both digital technology and community-based partnerships. Dr. Dimidjian received her BA in psychology from the University of Chicago and her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Washington.

 

 

Modern day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader, Cynthia Bourgeault divides her time between solitude at her seaside hermitage in Maine, and a demanding schedule traveling globally to teach and spread the recovery of the Christian contemplative and wisdom path.

Currently a core faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation, she has been a long-time advocate of the meditative practice of centering prayer and has worked closely with fellow teachers and colleagues including Thomas Keating, Bruno Barnhart, and Richard Rohr. Bourgeault has actively participated in numerous inter-spiritual dialogues and events with luminaries and leaders such as A.H. Almaas, Kabir Helminski, Swami Atmarupananda, and Rami Shapiro.

She is a member of the Global Peace Initiative for Women Contemplative Council and recipient of the 2014 Contemplative Voices award from Shalem Institute. She is a founding director of both The Contemplative Society and the Aspen Wisdom School. She continues to contribute to The Contemplative Society in her role as principal teacher and advisor.

Cynthia is the author of eight books: The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, The Wisdom Jesus, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Mystical Hope, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, Chanting the Psalms, and Love is Stronger than Death. She has also authored or contributed to numerous articles on the Christian wisdom path in publications such as Parabola Magazine, Gnosis Magazine, and Sewanee Theological Review.

Gregory Cajete is a Native American educator whose work is dedicated to honoring the foundations of indigenous knowledge in education. He is a Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. He has served as a New Mexico Humanities scholar in ethno-botany of Northern New Mexico and as a member of the New Mexico Arts Commission. In addition, he has lectured at colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, England, France, and Germany.

Cajete is director of Native American Studies and a Professor in the Division of Language, Literacy and Socio cultural Studies in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico. He has authored seven books, including Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education; Ignite the Sparkle: An Indigenous Science Education Curriculum Model; Spirit of the Game: Indigenous Wellsprings; A People’s Ecology: Explorations in Sustainable Living; Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence; Critical Neurophilosophy and Indigenous Wisdom; and Indigenous Community: Teachings of the Seventh Fire. He also has chapters in 22 other books along with numerous articles and more than 250 national and international presentations.