Dr. S. Ama Wray is a tenured Professor of Dance at the University of California, Irvine, and an improviser, choreographer, director, teacher, and scholar. Formerly known as Sheron Wray, she began her career as a dancer with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and later with Rambert Dance Theatre. Dr. Wray has also performed with JazzXchange Music and Dance Company, which she founded and directed, collaborating with artists including Wynton Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin, Mojisola Adebayo and Derek Bermel. Wray received a Ph.D. from the University of Surrey, where she developed her theory and practice of Embodiology®, based on West African principles of human. As its custodian it is now practiced as restorative movement method which leads to human flourishing. Embodiology’s distinctive breath-informed, rhythmic movement and music concepts have shown evidence-based efficacy in elevating vitality, wellbeing and resilience, along with emboldened activation of community cohesion. She has received numerous awards and fellowships for her work, including the UK National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts and an Emerging Scholar Award from the International Comparative & International Education Society in 2018. At UC Irvine, Dr. Wray leads The Africana Institute for Creativity, Recognition, and Elevation, a multidisciplinary concern that focuses on solutions to problems encountered in populations that have been historically and contemporaneously misserved. Emanating from her work with AICRE, she is a lead collaborator on the AI4Afrika initiative that has functioned as a content partner to the United Nations in Geneva to move the globe toward realizing the sustainable development goals. Dr. Wray is also writer, and with her monograph forthcoming, has published work including “Embodiology – Neo-African Knowledge Production” and “A 21st Century Dance Manifesto”, She continues to inspire students and dancers around the world with her innovative approach to movement and her commitment to social justice.
Nirmal Govindaraju led and conducted professional research on nanomaterials and wide bandgap semiconductors for 13 years in the US before moving to India in 2017 to work on science and math education for low-income children and adults.
Along the way, he has experienced, first-hand, the critical importance of social-emotional well-being for children to learn and thrive. He believes that humans are built to learn “naturally” when provided safe and supporting environments. Also, he has often found that tapping innate intelligence of individuals and communities leads to sustainable change and development. He also has a passion for science and math and is working on demonstrating that students, especially those often branded as “slow” or “poor” learners, are adept at constructing and applying science and math conceptual understanding when given structured and scaffolded learning environments with scope for exploration.
He holds a PhD in materials science and engineering from North Carolina State University, USA.
Sam is from Zimbabwe where he co-founded the Chikukwa Research Trust (CRT), which focuses on mindfulness-based trauma healing, regenerative agriculture, and social theatre across twelve villages. Sam is a Theatre of The Oppressed practitioner, establishing a ToTO network in Zimbabwe as well as conducting trainings across Ghana, Kenya, The United States, The Philippines, and occupied Palestine. His research includes health systems strengthening in Sub-Saharan Africa, humanitarian funding models, and the psychology of hierarchy formation and collective mobilisation. He has a B.A. in Social Psychology and Global Health from Yale University and is currently completing his MSc in African Studies at Oxford University. Sam is on the Mind and Life Young Adult Advisory Council and is a 2019 Dalai Lama Fellow. He has been awarded the Davis Projects for Peace, the Howland Fellowship, and the Thompson Prize for public service for his work
Wangũi wa Kamonji is a regeneration practitioner who researches and translates indigenous Afrikan knowledges into experiential processes, art and honey. Her work is motivated by the twin challenge of healing and generating new realities for the present and future. Informed by research using academic and indigenous methods; storytelling in written and oral forms; traditional Afrikan dance and movement practice; and facilitating spaces for critical consciousness and transformation, Wangũi seeks to provide rooted embodied tools for Afrikans to heal the colonial traumas of past and present, and (re)create ways to live regeneratively with themselves, Earth and ancestors again i.e., for us to decolonise and reindigenise. Her work involves ancestral connection, dance choreographed dance, improvisational movement, ancestral song, ritual design, indigenous food, oral storytelling, written poetry, fiction and non-fiction essays, collective creativity, processwork, and nervous system regulation with the Resilience Toolkit™. Wangũi is based in Ongata Rongai, East Afrika and online @_fromtheroots.
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.
