Theo Sowa is an independent advisor and consultant, specialising in international social development with a particular emphasis on children’s rights and protection issues. She is currently the CEO of the African Women’s Development Fund.

Born in Ghana, she has lived and worked in many countries in Africa, as well as the UK, Europe, and the USA. Her work includes advisory roles to African and other international women and children’s rights activists and leaders, plus policy development and advocacy with a variety of international agencies and organisations. She was Senior Programme Advisor to the UN Study on Children and Armed Conflict (the Machel Report) and led the five-year review of the report.

Sowa is a board member of various national and international civil society organisations and grant-making foundations, including being a trustee of Comic Relief (a multi-million grant-making foundation) and Chair of Comic Relief ’s International Grants Committee; a member of the African Advisory Board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation; a Patron of Evidence for Development; a member of the UBS Optimus Foundation; and a board member of the Graça Machel Trust.

She has authored many publications, including being a contributing editor to “The Impact of War on Children”; a contributing author and co editor of a Harvard Law School/UNICEF Innocenti publication on “Children and Transitional Justice”; and co author of “Groupwork and Intermediate Treatment.” She was awarded Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in June 2010.

Rebecca Shansky is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Her doctoral work at Yale University examined the influence of sex hormones on stress-related cognitive impairments, identifying an interaction between estrogen and catecholamine signaling. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, she studied the effects of chronic stress on prefrontal circuitry, again focusing on the role of estrogen in mediating the structural changes the brain undergoes in response to stress. Now her lab focuses on identifying the neurobiological basis of sex differences in fear responding, integrating complex behavioral analyses and confocal microscopy to identify cellular markers of susceptibility and resilience.

Mandaza Augustine Kandemwa is a spirit-medium and medicine-man from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. In Shona, his native tongue, he is known as a Mhondoro, Svikiro and Gombwa. He was initiated through the tradition of the njuzu, the water spirits. As a vessel of the Spirits, Mandaza receives visions and dreams, makes offerings, performs healing rituals, and serves as a messenger for the Ancient Ones. Mandaza carries with him in his heart the Central African spiritual tradition of healing and peacemaking. He is known internationally for his loving presence and for his preservation of the old ways. He stands for Truth, Love, Justice and Peace in this world.

Mandaza was raised in a Christian home, trained as an educator, school administrator, and police officer in Apartheid Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. During this time, he became actively involved in the liberation struggle. Like the water spirits he carries, Mandaza flows between the worlds. He easily moves between the worlds of Christianity, the secular, the traditional, the modern, the industrial and the earth ways: all that is sacred and profane. Currently, Mandaza travels internationally offering teachings and healing counsel in churches, schools, prisons and hospitals. He co-authored, with Michael Ortiz Hill, Twin from Another Tribe and The Village of the Water Spirits, two of the few books that discuss Shona cosmology and traditional practices. Mandaza serves a large community in Zimbabwe that is dependent on him for food, clothing, education, healing and spiritual nourishment. Mandaza is married to the Ndebele trance medium Simakuhle Dube and has twelve children, ten boys and two girls.

The Dalai Lama is a man of peace. He has consistently advocated policies of non-violence, even in the face of extreme aggression. He also became the first Nobel Laureate to be recognized for his concern for global environmental problems. He has travelled to more than 67 countries spanning six continents. He has received over 150 awards and honorary doctorates in recognition of his message of peace, non-violence, inter-religious understanding, universal responsibility and compassion. He has also authored or co-authored more than 110 books, including the “Book of Joy” with Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was born on 6 July 1935 to a farming family in a small hamlet of Tibet. He is now the spiritual leader of Tibet, yet describes himself as a simple Buddhist monk. At the age of 23 he passed a rigorous examination with honors and was awarded the Geshe Lharampa degree, equivalent to the highest doctorate in Buddhist philosophy. In 1950, after China’s invasion of Tibet, he was called upon to assume full political power. Therefore, in 1954, he went to Beijing and met with Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders. Five years later, following the brutal suppression of the Tibetan national uprising in Lhasa by Chinese troops, the Dalai Lama was forced to escape into exile. Since then he has been living in Dharamsala, northern India.

In 1963, he presented a draft democratic constitution for Tibet. The charter enshrines freedom of speech, belief, assembly and movement. It also provides detailed guidelines on the functioning of the Tibetan Administration with respect to Tibetans living in exile. In 1992, the Central Tibetan Administration published guidelines for the constitution of a future, free Tibet. In 1989 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent struggle for the liberation of Tibet.

Rev. Canon Mpho Tutu Van Furth is a priest, wife, mother, artist, theologian, and public speaker. She is passionate about the flourishing of all people, especially girls, and the planet. She is the daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Leah Tutu.

Tutu Van Furth has traveled extensively as a public speaker and priest. She has previously worked in Washington, D.C. and New York City in programs providing loans and scholarships to South Africans and refugees. She was ordained by the Episcopal Church in 2004. She founded the Tutu Institute for Prayer and Pilgrimage in 2005, and served as its executive director until 2011. From 2011 until 2016, she worked as executive director of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. She has co-authored two books with her father, Made for Goodness and The Book of Forgiving, and has co-authored a book about her father, Tutu: The Authorized Portrait.

Read her talk on ubuntu from her website »

Lily Mafela is a Professor of History and History Education at the University of Botswana in the Department of Languages and Social Sciences Education. She joined her department in 1983 as a newly graduated Staff Development Fellow. Following attainment of the MEd (History Teaching) degree from the University of Bristol, she served as head of the department. Between 1987 and 1993, Mafela studied at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, obtaining an MA and PhD in History, with a major in African History and a minor in Latin American History. Her doctoral dissertation, funded by a competitive award from the Rockefeller Foundation of New York, focused on gender analysis of the history of education in pre-colonial and colonial Botswana. She is currently revising that work for publication as a book. Subsequently, she earned an MBA from the De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. Mafela has published in the fields of history and education, with a particular focus on issues of social inclusion in education delivery, and in historical writing. A passionate educator with keen understanding of the multifaceted role of education in overall development, she is one of the pioneers of research that established the disturbing link between teenage pregnancy and lack of girls’ attainment of higher levels of education, subsequent to which ameliorative strategies have been implemented to promote better life chances for girls in Botswana’s education system. Mafela has demonstrated her leadership capabilities in many spheres of activity. She has served in key positions at regional and international levels, such as the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA), and the Association for African Historians (AAH), in each of which she served as executive board member. For a little under a decade now, she has also been serving in the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Project on the Pedagogical Use of the General History of Africa Volumes (PUGHA) as Rapporteur. This project aims to promote transformative approaches to the teaching of African history. The project also seeks to promote mutual understanding, interdependence and peaceful coexistence.

Marieke van Vugt is an assistant professor at the Bernoulli Institute of Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the University of Groningen (Netherlands). She obtained her PhD in neuroscience focusing on the role of brain oscillations in recognition memory with Dr. Michael Kahana at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. She then went on to do postdoctoral research on the neural correlates of decision making with Dr. Jonathan Cohen at Princeton University before starting her own group as a tenure track assistant professor in Groningen in 2010.

Her research focuses on dissecting the fundamental cognitive operations and neural processes involved in making decisions, and on how our decisions are affected by mind-wandering on the one hand, and meditation on the other. She makes use of a combination of computational modeling, neuroscience, and experimental psychology tools. She has developed a unique approach to studying meditation by using computational models of cognition. She has also developed a novel method to track perseverative cognition. She is also a pioneer in developing computational models of meditation and mind-wandering to better understand why, how, and when we get distracted. She tries to understand how the synchrony between brains is involved in social cognition, and has applied those methods in unusual contexts ranging from Tibetan Buddhist monks to dancers.

In addition to this academic career, she has been a practicing Tibetan Buddhist since 1998, and she also is a semi-professional classical ballet dancer. She very much enjoys projects where science, art, and contemplation meet.