As America’s Doctor, Dr. Murthy created initiatives to tackle our country’s most urgent public health issues. He chose areas of focus that were raised by people across America during his inaugural listening tour.

In addition to his role as America’s Doctor, as the Vice Admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Dr. Murthy commanded a uniformed service of 6,600 public health officers, serving the most underserved and vulnerable populations in over 800 locations domestically and abroad. He worked with thousands of Commissioned Corps officers to strengthen the Corps and protect the nation from Ebola and Zika and to respond to the Flint water crisis, major hurricanes, and frequent health care shortages in rural communities.

Dr. Murthy received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard and his M.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Yale. He completed his internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and later joined Harvard Medical School as faculty in internal medicine.

Dr. Murthy resides in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Dr. Alice Chen, and their two young children.

Carine Gibert is the founder of the interdisciplinary education and sustainability movement, Grounded In Motion. Currently her work focuses on how we engage in new ways of relation building with elements of the natural world. As a cultural heritage scholar, education practitioner and international facilitator she has curated experiences and led programs Internationally for over 10 years. Her residencies are led through storytelling, rituals, and embodied experiences. As a contemplative artist, she explores voice, soundscapes and the transmission of the Earth’s wisdom through her poetry. Carine is actively involved in expanding our reflections on how we move through and are shaped by the world, designing university and school curricula while teaching regularly in New York City. The courses bring together 7 practices, these practices explore notions of reciprocity, the role stories play in generating meaning in our lives, and the contextual factors shaping the mind, body, and spirit.

Amy Cohen Varela is Chairperson of the Mind & Life Europe Board and involved with Mind and Life since its inception. She is also a clinical psychologist specialized in psychodynamic therapy and philosophy. Amy studied comparative literature at Brown and Columbia Universities before moving to Paris in the early ‘80’s, where she received her degree in clinical psychology at the University of Paris 7, with a specialty in psychodynamic theory and practice, and in parallel, completed psychoanalytic training.

Tess is the Operations Manager at Mind & Life Institute. She has a bachelor’s degree in Finance from Virginia Tech. She brings varied skills to the organization gained through her work in the Real Estate field and volunteer positions at different nonprofits in the Charlottesville area. In her free time she enjoys reading, sewing, hanging out with her family and walks with her dog. 

Dr. Perovich’s research interest is understanding the Arctic system and its role in global climate change. The central focus of his research is simple to state: where does all the sunlight go? More precisely, how does the incident solar radiation interact with sea ice and snow? This simple statement belies the rich complexity and importance of the topic. The interaction of solar radiation with snow and sea ice is intimately interrelated with the physical and morphological properties of snow and ice and forcing from the atmosphere and ocean. Through the positive ice-albedo feedback, solar partitioning affects not only the Arctic system, but global climate as well.

Edward Maibach is a Mason Distinguished University Professor and Director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. His research and practice focus on enhancing public and policymaker engagement in climate change by activating trusted groups of professionals—including health professionals, TV weathercasters and other journalists—and climate educators. Ed previously served as the Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute, and Worldwide Director of Social Marketing at Porter Novelli. He is currently a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and serves on the Board of Directors of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

Karen O’Brien is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is also co-founder of cCHANGE, a social enterprise that promotes a conscious and collaborative approach to sustainability transformations. Her research focuses on the human and social dimensions of environmental change. She is committed to understanding and engaging with equitable transformations for a thriving world. She promotes integrative approaches to sustainability that recognize how beliefs, values, worldviews, and paradigms influence systems change and social change. Karen’s research focuses on fractal approaches to scaling transformative change and explores the potential for quantum social change in theory and practice.

Her recent books include You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World and Climate and Society: Transforming the Future (with Robin Leichenko). She has participated in four IPCC reports, and was co-chair of the International Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Transformative Change Assessment. In 2021 she was co-recipient of the BBVA Foundations Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Climate Change. She is a member of Academia Europea and in 2025 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Fred Bahnson is an award-winning writer and author of Soil & Sacrament (Simon & Schuster). “This book is profoundly, beautifully down to earth,” wrote Bill McKibben, “which is almost certainly where we all need to spend more time on a planet in crisis.” Bahnson’s essays and journalism have appeared in Harper’s, Oxford American, Orion, Notre Dame Magazine, Emergence, Image, The Sun, and Best American Spiritual Writing. His essay “On the Road with Thomas Merton” won a Wilbur Award for Best Magazine Article from the Religion Communicators Council and was selected by nature writer Robert MacFarlane for the anthology Best American Travel Writing 2020.

Bahnson’s writing awards include a Pilgrimage Essay Award, a W.K. Kellogg Food & Society Policy fellowship, and a North Carolina Artist fellowship in creative nonfiction from the NC Arts Council. He has given keynotes at places like Yale, Duke, Georgetown, TEDx Manhattan’s “Changing the Way We Eat,” and most recently at the 2019 Halki Summit in Istanbul, where he spoke on faith and climate change for an international gathering of environmental leaders convened by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. In 2012, Fred became founding director of the Food, Health, and Ecological Well-being Program, a national leadership development program at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity that trains and equips faith leaders, environmental advocates, and contemplative activists. He now lives and writes from his home in southwest Montana.

Essays:
https://emergencemagazine.org/feature/on-the-road-with-thomas-merton/
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/01/the-gate-of-heaven-is-everywhere-contemplative-christianity/

Interview:
https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/articles/2018/06/27/how-an-earthier-christianity-might-save-us

Book: Soil & Sacrament

Bonnie Waltch is a producer, director, and writer for documentaries and museum exhibit media. Most recently, she produced and wrote the one-hour international television documentary, Earth Emergency, and series of five short films, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops. Other work includes Super Reefs: The Future of Coral for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and exhibit media for the Pikes Peak Visitor Center, the Tennessee State Museum, the Mob Museum, and the National World War II Museum, among others. She has produced and written television programs for Nova/BBC, Scientific American Frontiers, and Discovery Channel. She also served as Executive Director of Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit fiscal sponsor. She holds a B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University.