José Godoy is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Mindfulness Teacher based in Asunción, Paraguay. He has been offering Mindfulness trainings in Paraguay since 2014 and he currently offers courses based on the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) programs. He also leads Mindfulness retreats, workshops, webinars and professional trainings. He has had extensive trainings to teach Mindfulness. Some of them include foundational trainings with Mindfulness Africa in South Africa, silent retreats with monastics in the tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, the 2017 Oxford Mindfulness Centre’s Summer School, daily online sessions with Jon Kabat-Zinn in 2020, international Mindfulness conferences and more recently the Mindful Self-Compassion Core Skills Course with Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer. His work experience includes the implementation of Mindfulness Based Programs in local hospitals, schools, universities, companies, governmental institutions, professional associations, NGOs, sports centers, and private trainings. Moreover, José has been offering Mindfulness teacher’s trainings for people in fields such as psychology, education and medicine who are interested in becoming Mindfulness instructors. Besides this job, José also offers private psychological sessions. He is also the founder of Mindfulness Paraguay and cofounder of the Paraguayan Mindfulness Association. Both Mindfulness Paraguay and the Paraguayan Mindfulness Association pursue the mission of promoting Mindfulness in the country and make it more accessible to people who might benefit from it regardless of ability to pay. In order to fulfil this mission, he also offers free trainings and scholarships. In this regard, José has been offering in site Mindfulness trainings for parents of children living with multiple disabilities since 2014. Moreover, he has facilitated talks and workshops free of charge in public schools, universities, hospitals, rehabilitation centers and foundations reaching different groups, such as doctors, nurses, students, teachers and patients living with chronic diseases.
Demond Hill Jr. is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Social Welfare. As a researcher and mental health practitioner, he focuses on the emotional well-being of Black children/youth in educational settings. Specifically, utilizing critical theories, his research looks at three important areas: (1) the whole development of Black children/youth with a specific focus on their emotional development, (2) the impact of oppression on their emotional lives, and (2) schools as sites of wellness and/or violence. Demond is unapologetically committed to collectively creating a laboratory and therapeutic world for Black children, Black youth, and Black families.
With a sensitivity to processes with social impact and an interest in contributing to the personal and collective well-being of communities, Alejandra has managed resources for over ten personal and third-party projects with cultural, social, and artistic approaches since 2016. Each project has involved artistic and ancestral techniques aimed at raising awareness, enhancing self-knowledge, and creating sustainable projects over time for communities.
She enjoys actively participating and working with causes that help individuals align with their life purposes and connect territories with their vocations, thus contributing to their autonomy and the development of their talents and skills. This positive impact facilitates economic growth and emotional stability for the communities involved.
Aproteem Choudhury is a Community Health and Mind Body Medicine Consultant with experience engaging, mobilizing, and uniting disadvantaged communities, clinical populations, and healthcare institutions through contemplative practices.
After Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston, TX, Aproteem Choudhury felt called to help his hometown. He trained with the Center for Mind Body Medicine (CMBM) and helped form the Greater Houston Healing Collaborative to serve those touched by the storm with connective, intimate, and empowering mind body skills groups.
Since his invitation to the Center for Mind Body Medicine’s international Faculty, Apro helps deliver large-scale comprehensive professional training programs in mind body medicine. Realizing that a public health approach is needed to transform trauma in individuals and communities, Apro has focused his work on developing capacity building programs that emphasize contemplative care after (and during) collective trauma.
Following the Robb Elementary school shooting in May 2022, Apro began traveling to Uvalde, TX to lay the groundwork for such a program. Nearly a year later, Apro now leads, and helps mentor a 150 member coalition of caregivers in the rural community integrate mind body medicine into their daily lives and work.
At home in Houston, TX, Apro is the mind body interventionist at Texas Children’s Hospital where he is developing a similar community of contemplative care, providing direct services to patients and providers, as well as conducting research on the feasibility and impact of delivering mind body interventions for children facing behavioral health challenges.
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.
