Our Key Staff Members
The Advisory Board
Our Advisory Council
More about our program

We are blessed to have the support of our trusted advisors:

Soren Gordhamer is a husband, father, and writer. He is author of the meditation book for teens, Just Say OM! as well as Meetings with Mentors. A graduate of Spirit Rock Meditation Center's Community Dharma Leader's program, Soren is the founder of the Lineage Project and has been working with incarcerated teens for the past seven years.

Roshi Bernie Glassman holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from UCLA. In 1967, Bernie began his Zen studies with Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles, He became Sensei Glassman - Maezumi Roshi's first Dharma Successor - in 1976. After receiving Dharma transmission, Bernie moved back to the Bronx in 1980 to establish the Zen Community of New York in Riverdale. Being concerned with issues of social action and the integration of Zen practice with everyday life, Glassman founded the Greyston Mandala, a network of community development organizations providing a variety of services in southwest Yonkers. Today, what is known as the Greyston Mandala, consists of several successful social-economic ventures: including * The Greyston Bakery * The Greyston Family Inn * Greyston Health Services and The Greyston Garden Project. In 1995 Bernie Glassman received inka, or the final seal of approval, from his teacher and became known as Roshi Bernie. In January of 1994, while leading a Bearing Witness street retreat in Washington DC, Roshi Glassman conceived of the creation of an Order of Zen practitioners dedicated to the cause of peace. Subsequently, the concept was broadened to become a global, multi-faith network.

Daniel Goleman is the author of , New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence, which argues that human competencies like self-awareness, self-discipline, persistence and empathy are of greater consequence than IQ in much of life, that we ignore the decline in these competencies at our peril, and that children can—and should—be taught these abilities. Dr. Goleman was a co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning at the Yale University Child Studies Center (now at the University of Illinois at Chicago), with the mission to help schools introduce emotional literacy courses In 2003 he published Destructive Emotions, an account of a scientific dialogue between the Dalai Lama and a group of psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers. Dr. Goleman has received many journalistic awards for his writing, including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize for his articles in the New York Times, and a Career Achievement award for journalism from the American Psychological Association.

Joan Halifax, Ph.D. is a Buddhist teacher, Shaman and anthropologist. Her books include: "SHAMANIC VOICES: A Survey of Visionary Narratives," wherein she writes of the curandera Shaman Maria Sabina among others, and "Shaman: the Wounded Healer." She has also contributed to a number of works including "HALFWAY UP THE MOUNTAIN: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment" by Mariana Caplan. In 1990 she founded Upaya in Santa Fe, NM, where she now practices, teaches, and works in the New Mexico Penitentiary with maximum-security prisoners and men on death row, She was formally ordained in 1976 by Zen Master Seung Sahn. In 1990, she received the Lamp Transmission from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and is a Dharmacarya in the Tiep Hien Order. She is a Founding Teacher in the Zen Peacemaker Order of Roshi Bernie Glassman and the late Sensei Jishu Holmes and is a Soto Priest and teacher.

Jon Kabat- Zinn, founder and former Executive Director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is also the founder and former director of its renowned Stress Reduction Clinic and Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He teaches mindfulness in various venues around the world, and is well known from his best-selling books -- Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go There You Are ?his recent book, Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness and through the Bill Moyers' PBS special, Healing and the Mind.

Cyndi Lee is a practitioner of both Tibetan Buddhism and Hatha Yoga. Before founding OM yoga center in 1998, she taught yoga internationally for more than twenty years. She is known as a nurturing and compassionate teacher with an offbeat and playful style. She writes on yoga for several magazines and is the author of several books including Yoga Body, Buddha Mind and OM Yoga: a Guide to Daily Practice.

Noah Levine is a Buddhist teacher, author and counselor. He is trained to teach by Jack Kornfield of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. He teaches meditation classes, workshops and retreats nationally as well as leading groups in juvenile halls and prisons. Noah holds a masters degree in counseling psychology from CIIS. He has studied with many prominent teachers in both the Theravadan and Mahayanan Buddhist traditions.

Angel Kyodo Williams is a spiritual advisor, activist, artist and founder of urban PEACE. She is the author of the critcally-acclaimed Being lack: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace and serves as spiritual director of New Dharma Meditation Center for Urban Peace in Oakland CA, a training center for engaging individual, community and social transformation as spiritual practice. A Spiritual Activism Fellow and graduate of the Rockwood yearlong training: Leading From the Inside Out, she currently leads the Mind Body Awareness Project and serves on the boards of ForestEthics, Vision Youthz and YES! Her work has been covered in the New York Times, Ms., Essence, Village Voice and on the Oxygen Channel. Rev. Angel speaks, consults, counsels and leads retreats, workshops and trainings, virtually and nationwide.

Dr. Bo Lozoff is founder and director of Human Kindness Foundation. He and his wife, Sita, live at Kindness House, an interfaith spiritual community in North Carolina which runs the Foundation and also serves as a parole plan for prisoners from all over the U.S. Some members of their community and staff came to Kindness House directly from long periods of incarceration. Human Kindness Foundation is best known for its Prison-Ashram Project, which helps prisoners and prison staff throughout the world to turn inward and use their harsh environments to develop wisdom and compassion. The Foundation’s quarterly newsletter, A Little Good News, is sent to approximately 40,000 people who try to integrate these principles into their lives. Bo’s first book, We’re All Doing Time (now in five languages), has been called "the Convict's Bible" by prisoners around the world. His other books include Lineage and Other Stories, Just Another Spiritual Book, Deep & Simple: a spiritual path for modern times, It’s a Meaningful Life – It Just Takes Practice, and his only book written especially for children, The Wonderful Life of a Fly Who Couldn’t Fly. Bo and his wife, Sita, received the Temple Award for Creative Altruism for their lifelong work in peace and justice. In 1999, the Chicago Theological Seminary awarded Bo an honorary doctorate (Doctor of Laws), citing his commitment for bringing "God's reign of mercy and justice" into the world. In 2003, One Spirit Interfaith Seminary of New York bestowed their “Partners With God” award on Bo and Sita for their longstanding contribution toward bridging the principles of all major faiths

Sharon Salzberg has been a student of Buddhism since 1971, and has been leading meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. She teaches both intensive awareness practice (vipassana or insight meditation) and the profound cultivation of lovingkindness and compassion (the Brahma Viharas). She is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and The Forest Refuge, a new center for long term meditation practice. Sharon has recently finished writing a book titled Faith. She is the author of Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness and A Heart as Wide as the World, by Shambhala Publications; Lovingkindness Meditation (audio) by Sounds True; and co-author with Joseph Goldstein of Insight Meditation, a Step-by-Step Course on How to Meditate, also from Sounds True. She has edited Voices of Insight, an anthology of writings by vipassana teachers in the West, published by Shambhala.

Gina Sharpe has studied and practiced Buddhism for over 30 years, across several traditions. She is a graduate of the first Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leaders Program, and a cofounder of New York Insight Meditation Center. She has taught meditation since 1994.