Speaker Bios:
Bhikkhu Bodhi is an American Buddhist monk from New York City. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944, he obtained a BA in philosophy from Brooklyn College (1966) and a PhD in philosophy from Claremont Graduate School (1972).
Drawn to Buddhism in his early 20s, after completing his university studies he traveled to Sri Lanka, where he received novice ordination in 1972 and full ordination in 1973, both under the late Ven. Ananda Maitreya, the leading Sri Lankan scholar-monk of recent times.
He was appointed editor of the Buddhist Publication Society (in Sri Lanka) in 1984 and its president in 1988. Ven. Bodhi has many important publications to his credit, either as author, translator, or editor, including the Buddha — A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (co-translated with Ven. Bhikkhu Nanamoli (1995), The Connected Discourses of the Buddha — a New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya (2000), and In the Buddha’s Words (2005).
In May 2000 he gave the keynote address at the United Nations on its first official celebration of Vesak (the day of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and passing away). He returned to the U.S. in 2002. He currently resides at Chuang Yen Monastery and teaches there and at Bodhi Monastery. He is currently the chairman of Yin Shun Foundation.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, is a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher engaged in bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and society. He is professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he was founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, and founder (in 1979) and former director of its world-renown Stress Reduction Clinic. He is the author of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, and co-author, with his wife, Myla, of Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting. His new book, Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness, was published in January 2005.
His work has contributed to a growing movement of mindfulness into mainstream institutions in our society such as medicine, health care and hospitals, schools, corporations, prisons, and professional sports.
Kabat-Zinn received his PhD in molecular biology from MIT in 1971. Kabat-Zinn’s research between 1979 and 2002 focused on mind/body interactions for healing and on the effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on the brain, body, and immune system.
In 1993, his work in the stress reduction clinic was featured in Bill Moyer’s PBS special, Healing and the Mind and in the book of the same title.
During his career, he has trained groups of judges, business leaders, lawyers, clergy, Olympic athletes, and environmental activists in mindfulness. Under his direction, the Center for Mindfulness conducted MBSR programs in the inner city in Spanish as well as in English, and in the state prison system in Massachusetts. He conducts annual mindfulness retreats for business leaders and innovators, and with his colleagues he conducts training retreats for health professionals in MBSR. More than 250 medical centers and clinics nationwide and abroad now use the MBSR model.
In 1998, he received the Art, Science, and Soul of Healing Award from the Institute for Health and Healing, California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, and in 2001, the 2nd Annual Trailblazer Award for “pioneering work in the field of integrative medicine” from the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in La Jolla, Calif. He is a founding fellow of the Fetzer Institute, a fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and the founding convener of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, a network of deans, chancellors, faculty at major U.S. medical schools engaged at the creative edges of mind/body and integrative medicine. He is also on the board of the Mind and Life Institute, a group that organizes dialogues between the Dalai Lama and Western scientists to promote deeper understanding of different ways of knowing and probing the nature of mind, emotions, and reality.
B. Alan Wallace: Dynamic lecturer, progressive scholar, and one of the most prolific writers and translators of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D., continually seeks innovative ways to integrate Buddhist contemplative practices with Western science to advance the study of the mind.
Dr. Wallace, a scholar and practitioner of Buddhism since 1970, has taught Buddhist theory and meditation worldwide since 1976. Having devoted fourteen years to training as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by H. H. the Dalai Lama, he went on to earn an undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science at Amherst College and a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford.
With his unique background, Alan brings deep experience and applied skills to the challenge of integrating traditional Indo-Tibetan Buddhism with the modern world.
Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is a Google pioneer, an award-winning engineer, a New York Times bestselling author, a thought leader, and a philanthropist. He is also quite funny.
Meng is Google’s Jolly Good Fellow (which nobody can deny). Like many things in Google, his unusual job title started as a joke, but eventually became real. Meng was one of Google’s earliest engineers. Among many other things, he helped build Google’s first mobile search service, and headed the team that kept a vigilant eye on Google’s search quality.
One of Meng’s main projects at Google is a groundbreaking mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course called Search Inside Yourself, which was featured on the front page of the Sunday Business section of the New York Times. Search Inside Yourself is also the title of Meng’s New York Times bestselling book which has been endorsed by world leaders such as President Carter of the United States and President Nathan of Singapore, business leaders such as Eric Schmidt of Google and John Mackey of Whole Foods Markets, and spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama and Deepak Chopra. Meng hopes Search Inside Yourself will eventually contribute to world peace in a meaningful way.
Meng earned his MS in Computer Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He went to Santa Barbara mainly for the beach, but didn’t mind the graduate degree either. He has won many computing-related awards, including the Championship of Singapore’s National Software Competition. Prior to coming to the United States, Meng had a successful engineering career in Singapore. (He knew it was successful because nobody offered to fire him).
By most accounts, The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi is an innovative thinker, a philosopher educator, a philanthropist, a polymath and a monk. He is the Founding Director of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a center dedicated to inquiry, dialogue, and education on the ethical and humane dimensions of life. As a collaborative and nonpartisan think tank, its programs emphasize responsibility and examine meaningfulness and moral purpose between individuals, organizations, and societies. The Center at MIT has 6 Nobel Peace Laureates as its founding members and its programs run in 8 countries and expanding.
Venerable Tenzin’s unusual background encompasses entering a Buddhist monastery at the age of 10 years to receiving graduate education at Harvard withe degrees ranging from Philosophy to Physics to International Relations.
He has been interviewed by the National Public Radio and articles on him and his work have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and La Republica. He also speaks at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, various institutes of learning and Fortune 500 companies on topics ranging from leadership to enlightened organizations.
Venerable Tenzin serves on the Board of several academic, humanitarian, and religious organizations. He is a recipient of several recognitions and awards, most recent of which is a 2013 Distinguished Alumni Award from Harvard for his visionary contributions to humanity.
Media Lab director Joi Ito is a leading thinker and writer on innovation, global technology policy, and the role of the Internet in transforming society in substantial and positive ways. A vocal advocate of emergent democracy, privacy, and Internet freedom, Ito has served as both board chair and CEO of Creative Commons, and sits on the boards of Sony Corporation, Creative Commons, Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The New York Times Company, Mozilla Foundation, WITNESS, and Global Voices.
In Japan, he was a founder of Digital Garage, and helped establish and later became CEO of the country’s first commercial Internet service provider. He was an early investor in more than 40 companies, including Flickr, Six Apart, Last.fm, Kongregate, Kickstarter, and Twitter. Ito’s honors include TIME magazine’s “Cyber-Elite” listing in 1997 (at age 31) and selection as one of the “Global Leaders for Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum (2001). In 2008, BusinessWeek named him one of the “25 Most Influential People on the Web.” In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute. In 2013, he received an honorary D.Litt from The New School in New York City.
Pat Christen leads with curiosity and candor. As President and CEO of HopeLab, she has cultivated an environment that supports creativity, integrity and full engagement among a multidisciplinary team researching and developing products that harness the power and appeal of technology to improve human health and well-being. Pat is passionate about fostering a community of belonging, curiosity, accountability and innovation among the HopeLab team and its collaborators.
Under Pat’s leadership, HopeLab has focused its work on the translation of insights from scientific and human-factors research into actionable design principles for product development, experimenting and generating evidence on how psychological and social experience impact biological health. Products developed by HopeLab include the Re-Mission games to motivate treatment adherence in young cancer patients and the Zamzee activity meter and website to motivate physical activity among kids and families. HopeLab’s newest initiative focuses ondeveloping tools to cultivate resilience, by fostering people’s sense of purpose, connection and control, as a way to improve psychological and biological health.
Pat also leads an initiative exploring the psychological, social and systemic factors that influence ethical engagement in the world. This work aims to illuminate opportunities for large-scale, sustainable impact in enabling ethical behavior and compassionate action through HopeLab projects and projects of other philanthropic enterprises founded and funded by Pam and Pierre Omidyar.
Prior to HopeLab, Pat was President and Executive Director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation for 15 years, where she worked with her counterparts nationally to craft the federal Ryan White C.A.R.E. Act. This precedent-setting legislation now generates more than $2 billion annually in funding for AIDS care in the United States.
Pat also served as President of the Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation, establishing AIDS clinics and playing an active role in AIDS-planning efforts globally. As president of Pangaea, she was responsible for the construction of the Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, a state-of-the-art AIDS clinic, research, and training center which opened its doors in August of 2004. Pat has written, studied, and lectured on social and health issues both in the U.S. and abroad. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, East Africa from 1982–1985.
Pat is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and is a graduate of Stanford University, where she studied biology and political science. She is a mother of four, a role that deeply inspires her work.
Pattie Maes is the Alexander W. Dreyfoos (1954) Professor in MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences and associate head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences. She founded and directs the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces research group. Previously, she founded and ran the Software Agents group. Prior to joining the Media Lab, Maes was a visiting professor and a research scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. She holds bachelor’s and PhD degrees in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. Her areas of expertise are human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence.
Maes is the editor of three books, and is an editorial board member and reviewer for numerous professional journals and conferences. She has received several awards: FastCompany named her one of 50 most influential designers (2011). Newsweekmagazine named her one of the “100 Americans to watch for” in the year 2000; TIME Digital selected her as a member of the Cyber-Elite, the top 50 technological pioneers of the high-tech world; the World Economic Forum honored her with the title “Global Leader for Tomorrow”; Ars Electronica awarded her the 1995 World Wide Web category prize; and in 2000 she was recognized with the “Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council. She also received an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.
Her 2009 TED talk is among the most watched TED talks ever. In addition to her academic endeavors, Maes has been active as an entrepreneur as cofounder of several venture-backed companies including Firefly Networks (sold to Microsoft) and Open Ratings (sold to Dun & Bradstreet). She remains an advisor and investor to several MIT spinoffs.
As an entrepreneur, Kevin Slavin has successfully integrated digital media, game development, technology, and design. He is a pioneer in rethinking game design and development around new technologies (like GPS) and new platforms (like Facebook).
In 2005 he co-founded Area/Code (acquired by Zynga in 2011), where he developed large-scale, real-world games using mobile, pervasive, and location-aware technologies. This included work for major companies, including Nokia, Nike, and Puma, and also for media giants, including MTV, A&E, the Discovery Channel, CBSl, and Disney. He co-founded AFK Labs in 2008, designing next-generation responsive environments, including one for what was then the largest and densest sensor mesh on the planet.
Slavin argues that we’re living in a world designed for–and increasingly controlled by–algorithms. His very popular TED talk, “How Algorithms Shape Our World,” has received over 2 million views. He frequently delivers keynote addresses and has spoken at international venues such as the Royal Society of Art, Aspen Institute, BBC, and MIP/Cannes.
Slavin has taught at NYU’s ITP, the Cooper Union, and Fabrica, and has worked as a creative director and strategic planner in advertising agencies, including DDB and TBWA\Chiat\Day. He is currently working on producing a TV show for network broadcast. As an artist, his public, city-scale work has been exhibited in Frankfurt’s Museum fuer Moderne Kunst and the Design Museum of London. He has been written about in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Wired, and Fast Company. He received his BFA from the Cooper Union.
Tinsley Galyean has served on the Steering Committee for The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT since it’s founding. He was the first person to receive a Ph.D from the Interactive Cinema Group at the MIT Media Lab, and also holds a Sc.M in Computer Graphics from Brown University and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
His work at the Interactive Cinema group at the MIT Media Lab included creating cinematic storytelling techniques for use in interactive experiences and producing a short animated piece that was theatrically released. He also directed a virtual reality exhibit for the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and published a number of papers in the fields of computer graphics, human computer interfaces and artificial intelligence.
As an entrepreneur, Tinsley has been involved with a number of startups over the years. These companies are known for working to leverage the power of new technologies to create unique entertainment and educational experiences for clients. Their clients include Intel, Hewlett-Packard, British Telecom, AT&T, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Cirque Du Soleil’s Beatles Revolution Lounge, and The Millennium Dome UK.By using entertainment and informational elements, Tinsley has helped museums like MoMA, Museum of Science & Industry Chicago, Boston Museum of Science, Liberty Science Center, Georgia Aquarium, and SciTech Perth, engage and educate their audiences. His work developing mass media experiences for children have included broadcast and online projects for Disney, Warner Brothers, and an Emmy nominated program for Discovery Kids.
Judson Brewer MD PhD is a thought leader in the “science of self-mastery,” having combined over 15 years of experience with mindfulness training with his scientific research therein. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, spoken at international conferences, and his work has been featured at TEDx, Time magazine (top 100 new health discoveries of 2013), Forbes, BBC, NPR, Businessweek and others. He also writes an addiction blog for the Huffington Post.
He graduated cum laude from Princeton University, Received his MD PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, and completed his psychiatry residency at Yale University School of Medicine, where he spent 5 years on faculty as an assistant professor and medical director of the Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic at Yale.
He is currently the Director of Research at the Center for Mindfulness and an associate professor in Medicine and Psychiatry at UMass Medical School. Based on his recent discoveries of brain regions involved in meditation, he is developing novel neurofeedback techniques to measure and train meditative “flow” states. In 2012 he founded goBlue labs to move these into the marketplace.
Christopher Germer, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice, specializing in mindfulness- and compassion-based treatment. He has been integrating the principles and practices of meditation into psychotherapy since 1978.
Dr. Germer is a clinical instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance, and a founding faculty member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. He lectures internationally on mindfulness and self-compassion, is a co-editor of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, and Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy, and author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions.
Susan Gere, Ph.D., is Professor and Director of the Division of Counseling and Psychology at Lesley University. She has held both faculty and administrative positions in higher education. She has initiated program development and taught courses in clinical mental health counseling, trauma studies, consultation, leadership and mindfulness studies at the university. She has published and presented internationally on clinical trauma theory and mindfulness in the integration of personal, professional and clinical knowledge in teaching.
Jared Kass, Ph.D., Professor of Counseling and Psychology at Lesley University, began integrating contemplative practice into higher education in 1980. His prevention-oriented research program (quantitative and qualitative methods) explores the role of contemplative practice in psychological resilience, pro-social behavior, and community-building. He is the author of The Inventory of Positive Psychological Attitudes, a validated research instrument that measures a resilient worldview. Kass worked with Dr. Carl Rogers, on the staff of the Person-Centered Approach Project, from 1976-1981. Subsequently, he conducted research with Dr. Herbert Benson at the Section on Behavioral Medicine, Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospitals. His visiting appointments include: Associate (Emeritus), USDOE Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Other Drug, and Violence Prevention; Visiting Scholar, Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge, MA); Visiting Scholar, Danielson Institute, Boston University; Fellow, Center for Contemplative Mind in Society; and, Senior Scholar in Psychology, studying human nature, motivation, and change on a project sponsored by the University of Notre Dame and the University of New Mexico.
James R. Doty, M.D. is the founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University of which His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the founding benefactor. He collaborates with scientists from a number of disciplines examining the neural bases for compassion and altruism. Additionally, he examines the impact of meditation interventions on potentiating one’s compassion and the effect on peripheral physiology. He is also interested in determining whether such interventions in the domains of education, healthcare, business, the justice system and civic government can result in positive change.
Dr. Doty is also a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University School of Medicine, as well as an inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist. His neurosurgical research and clinical interests have been focused on stereotactic radiosurgery and complex and minimally invasive spine surgery. As a philanthropist, he supports a number of charitable organizations supporting peace initiatives and providing healthcare throughout the world. He also supports a variety of research initiatives and has provided scholarships and endowed chairs at multiple universities including Stanford University and Tulane University School of Medicine, his Alma Mater.
He serves on the Board of a number of non-profit organizations including the Dalai Lama Foundation of which he is chairman and the Board of Governors of Tulane University School of Medicine. He also serves on the Senior Advisory Board of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions and the Advisory Council of the Charter of Compassion International.