Vaishali Mamgain is an Associate Professor of Economics and the Director of the Bertha Crosley Ball Center for Compassion at the University of Southern Maine. She received her PhD in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; her past research focused on the contributions of (im)migrants and refugees in the Maine economy; her current research is in contemplative pedagogy. A leader in the field of contemplative education, she is passionate about deconstructing epistemology and “decolonizing” contemplative practices to help educators create a more inclusive, creative, and joyful learning environment. 

She also facilitates compassion training and anti-oppression workshops for corporate and nonprofit organizations in the US and abroad, specializing in somatic and immersive nature training to undo (internalized) oppression, and help vision different, more equitable, loving societies. She serves on the Board of Directors of CMind: The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, and is a frequent contributor to programming. She is also faculty and Board member of the Courage of Care Coalition where, with others, she designs and facilitates trauma informed courses to resource participants especially global majority (aka BIPOC) and climate justice activists. 

A working contemplative, she has meditated, wandered and ‘retreat’ed for many years. In 2017, she completed a three year meditation retreat at Samten Ling Retreat Center in Crestone, Colorado and now lives on a beautiful island in Maine where she enjoys swimming in the sea, admiring seaweed, running, hiking, singing, and cooking. 

Dr. Inger Burnett-Zeigler is a licensed clinical psychologist and associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. She has two decades of clinical experience helping people with stress, trauma, mood and anxiety conditions, and difficulty in interpersonal relationships. In her clinical practice she promotes holistic wellness through mindfulness, self-compassion and healthy behavior change. Inger’s scholarly work focuses on the role that social determinants of health play in mental illness and treatment, particularly in the Black community. She is the author of the book Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen: The Emotional Lives of Black Women. She has written dozens of articles and other publications on mental health in the Black community and lectures widely on barriers to access and engagement in mental health treatment, mindfulness and strategies to improve mental health outcomes and participation in treatment. Inger is an advocate for normalizing participation in mental health treatment and ensuring that all individuals have access to high-quality, evidence-based mental health care. She is an active contributor to the public discourse on mental health and she has been featured in the New York Times, TIME Magazine, and Chicago Tribune. Inger received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Cornell University, her doctorate in clinical psychology from Northwestern University, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the VA Ann Arbor/University of Michigan. She lives in Chicago.

Dr. Kedrick B. Perry is the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion in the Office of Equity and Inclusion at Loyola University New Orleans where he provides strategic guidance and serves as a thought leader and partner supporting all campus constituencies in achieving inclusive excellence throughout the institution. Before Loyola, Dr. Perry was head of diversity and outreach in the National Science Foundation’s Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science and executive director of the Grand Challenges Scholars Program at the University of California, Berkeley.  Previously, he was director of the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program at Suffolk University in Boston, where he prepared underrepresented, first-generation, and limited-income undergraduate students for graduate study.  Prior to that position, he worked in the Office of Graduate Student Diversity Programs at the University of Virginia where he was committed to the recruitment, retention, mentoring, and graduation of a highly talented and diverse graduate student population.  He received his doctorate in higher education from the University of Virginia where he studied the effects of mentoring on underrepresented students. Dr. Perry also holds a Master of Public Administration and a graduate certificate in nonprofit management from North Carolina State University and a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.