Tara Wilkie, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology with a special focus on understanding different learning profiles. She has been a researcher, a classroom resource teacher, a special education consultant, a school psychologist, and a university lecturer. Wilkie’s research has focused on the use of computers as cognitive tools and the application of metacognitive learning strategies. Her clinical experience includes working with children and adolescents both in the classroom and in specialized settings.

Since 2015, Wilkie has been the Director of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) at the Peace Grantmakers Network (PGN), a group of philanthropic foundations, individual donors, and partner organizations working collaboratively in applied peace efforts and social harmony initiatives. As the director of SEL at PGN as well as its key resource facilitator, Wilkie has been actively involved in the development of such applied peace initiatives as “Les Grandes Rencontres.” She also helped organize two key symposia for educators: “Creating Caring School Communities: Social Emotional Learning & Bullying Prevention” (February 2014) and “Research Meets Practice: Effective Tools to Prevent Bullying” (November 2014). Wilkie’s current focus is in the area of SEL, bullying prevention, and creating caring school communities.

Wilkie co-developed “Ma Classe Zone de Paix,” a non-violent, communicationbased SEL school program. Since 2009, she has been teaching this program in French two days a week at École Bussonière, a primary school in Montréal. She also offers workshops and training on SEL for teachers, parents, and school boards and maintains a private practice. Wilkie is the co-founder, with Sophie Boyer Langri, of the Institute of Social Emotional Education and the co-author of CS3, a K–8 curriculum. She lives in Montréal with her husband and two daughters.

Sophie Langri, M.A., holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies and Anthropology from Montréal University and an M.A. in Sociology and Politics of Development from the University of Cambridge, England. She has been the project manager for the Institute of Tibetan Classics since 1999. Since 2003, Langri has been a regular attendee at the biannual Mind & Life International Symposium for Contemplative Research and the in-depth dialogues between the Dalai Lama and scientists and scholars interested in the study of the human mind and its potentials. Her participation in these conferences has enabled her to interact with neuroscientists, psychologists, and educators who are passionate about translating important scientific insights into the domain of education. In addition, Langri has received extensive training in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) as well as Restorative Justice methods. Combining her NVC background with what she has learned through years of interaction with scientists in the field of brain and learning, in 2008 Langri created and began Ma Classe Zone de Paix, a school program teaching social and emotional learning (SEL) for children ages 5–12. For this innovative school program, Langri was awarded the YMCA Québec Peace Medal in 2010. She is currently working as an SEL consultant with the Ministry of Education Québec for the Grandes Rencontres project, which will give information to all school regions about SEL throughout Québec. She is currently also in the process of receiving her certification as a Stanford Compassion Cultivation Training instructor. Langri is the co-founder, along with Tara Wilkie, of the Institute of Social Emotional Education and the co-author of CS3, a K-8 curriculum. She lives in Montréal with her husband and two daughters.

Kimberly Schonert-Reichl is an applied developmental psychologist and a professor in the Human Development, Learning, and Culture area in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She is also the director of the Human Early Learning Partnership in the School of Population and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. She began her career as a middle school teacher and then was a teacher for “at risk” adolescents in an alternative high school. She received her master’s from the University of Chicago and her doctorate from the University of Iowa. She was a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow in the Clinical Research Training Program in Adolescence at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry.

For more than two decades, her research has focused on the social and emotional development of children and adolescents in school and community settings.

Daniel Goleman, best known for his worldwide bestseller “Emotional Intelligence,” is most recently co-author of “Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body.” A meditation practitioner since his college days, Goleman spent two years in India, first as a Harvard Predoctoral Traveling Fellow and then on a postdoctoral fellowship. Goleman’s first book, “The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience,” is written on the basis of that research, offering an overview of various meditation paths. Goleman has moderated several Mind & Life Dialogues between the Dalai Lama and scientists, ranging from topics such as “Emotions and Health” to “Environment, Ethics and Interdependence.” Goleman’s 2014 book, “A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World,” combines the Dalai Lama’s key teachings, empirical evidence, and true accounts of people putting his lessons into practice, offering readers guidance for making the world a better place. Having worked with leaders, teachers, and groups around the globe, Goleman has transformed the way the world educates children, relates to family and friends, and conducts business.

Goleman is a Founding Steward of the Mind & Life Institute. He served on the Mind & Life Board of Directors from 1990 to 2017.

 

Yuki Imoto teaches anthropology in the liberal arts program at Keio University’s Faculty of Science and Technology. She completed her doctorate degree in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Oxford, where she also worked as a research associate at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. She has conducted fieldwork in multi- cultural, transnational, and alternative spaces of education within Japan, and has published numerous articles and books on this topic, relating her fieldwork experience to her own background of growing up biculturally. More recently, Yuki has been focusing her work on cross-cultural experiences/understandings of contemplative pedagogy, particularly in American and Japanese higher education. Between 2017 and 2018, she was based at Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley as a Fulbright scholar, and conducted ethnographic fieldwork on contemplative education in several American universities and other spaces of learning, including the Mind & Life Institute. 

Imoto currently collaborates with a number of contemplative scholars, anthropologists, community activists and artists in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, and is designing a liberal arts program that integrates first-, second- and third-person approaches into learning, teaching, and research. 

Koshikawa is a professor of psychology, Waseda University and the president of the Japanese Association of Mindfulness. Her research interest is the effectiveness of Eastern techniques, such as meditation and yoga, on reducing stress and increasing mental health. The focus of her recent research has been to understand how and why mindfulness meditation has effects on reduction of stress responses and how to use mindfulness meditation to empower people who find themselves stressed and exhausted. Koshikawa has practiced transcendental meditation, Zen meditation, and mindfulness meditation since graduate school. Her first encounter with mindfulness meditation was in a workshop in 1993 by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who created Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. She deepened understanding of it during her sabbatical at University of Oxford between 2003–2004, under Dr. Mark Williams, who developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy with Zindel Segal and John D. Teasdale. 

In addition to teaching students at the university, she also teaches mindfulness meditation in a mental clinic, a community center and elsewhere to help people cope with stress, anxiety, and depression. Her books include Horizons in Buddhist Psychology: Practice, Research & Theory (A Tao Institute Publication, 2009); Mindfulness: Basis and Practice (in Japanese) (Nippon Hyoron sha, 2016); the Japanese translation (Kitaoji Shobo, 2007) of Mindfulness- based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A new approach to preventing relapse (Guilford, 2002); Japan (translated by Chun-shu company, 2007); Buddhism Meditation Theories (Chun-shu company, 2008); History of Japanese Buddhism (Shunsha Co., 2015), among others.


Masaki Matsubara, Ph.D. Masaki Matsubara is a scholar of Japanese religions at the East Asia Program at Cornell University and is also a Japanese Rinzai Zen priest. Following his Zen monastic training, he received his M.A. in Asian Studies and Ph.D. in Asian Religions from Cornell University. His doctoral dissertation focused on Zen master Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1769), a seminal figure occupying a prominent place in the history of Japanese religion. 

Matsubara’s research examines issues regarding identity, memory, and authenticity, specifically how these are culturally, socially, and historically developed in the tradition mechanisms of building, reinvention, and maintenance within contemporary Japanese Zen Buddhism (1868– present). His research focuses primarily on a study of the invention of Buddhist traditions and its effects on the identity creation of Buddhist religious figures, with particular emphasis on various historical, social, and institutional forces and factors in a particular historical context that have determined our received images of the past. 

Matsubara taught Buddhist studies, East Asian languages and cultures, and religious studies at University of California, Berkeley (2009-2013) and was a fellow at the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University (2013-14). His courses ranged from modern to contemporary topics, including the particular narrative genres of biography, autography, hagiography, and translation. He also currently serves as an adjunct affiliated chaplain with Cornell United Religious Work at Cornell University. He is the head abbot of Butsumoji Zen Temple in Chiba, Japan, supervising a nearby affiliated International Zen Center in Japan and traveling between the United States and Japan to lead seminars and retreats. Matsubara is the author of “Hakuin Ekaku” in Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2014). He currently resides in New York City.