Shawn Clement is a Salesforce & IT Consultant for the Mind & Life Institute. Shawn worked full-time at the Mind & Life Institute from 2018 to mid-2019 on the Advancement and IT teams, prior to moving to DC to work with a Jewish non-profit. He received his masters in Higher Education from the University of Virginia and BA in Special Education from Winthrop University. Shawn enjoys learning new things, playing video games, and exploring new cities.
Phil Walker is a Creative Content Producer at the Mind & Life Institute. Phil is a filmmaker and producer from Atlanta with a BA in Media Arts from the University of South Carolina. He worked at Georgia Tech in Communications for eight years where he produced global media projects in partnership with the Carter Center and the United Nations. In 1998, Phil started his own production company and made several feature documentaries and numerous short films presented on PBS and other outlets. Awards include a regional Emmy Award (1995), the Kodak Vision Award (Slamdance Film Festival 2010) and a THEA award (2016).
Emiliana Simon-Thomas is the Science Director at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. A Berkeley native, she earned her PhD in Psychology studying how emotional and cognitive processes interact to shape behavior and brain activity. During her post-doc, Emiliana studied the biological correlates and social functions of pro-social emotions like compassion, gratitude, and awe. She then served as Associate Director/Senior Scientist at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford, examining how compassion, both innate and learned, benefits health and well-being. At the GGSC, she oversees the student research fellowship program, runs key initiatives like Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude, and provides an expert scientific voice on the key roles that social connection, support, and belonging play in well-being to audiences worldwide. She also co-teaches The Science of Happiness, a BerkeleyX MOOC that has enrolled over 600,000 people from all over the world, as well as the Science of Happiness at Work Professional Certificate Series. She regularly lectures on the biological underpinnings of social connection, as well as empirically-supported approaches to improving interpersonal dynamics – like practicing mindfulness, and increasing compassion, gratitude, and generosity. Alongside her academic and popular writing, Emiliana recently co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science, a transdisciplinary compendium of articles from world-class researchers. Emiliana’s work leverages cutting edge scientific insights to help people live better lives individually, in relationship with others, within organizations and communities, and society-wide.
Otto Scharmer, author of Theory U and co-author of Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-system to Eco-system Economies, is an action researcher who co-creates innovations in learning and leadership that he delivers through classes and programs at MIT, MITx U.Lab, the Presencing Institute, and through innovation projects with organizations in business, government and civil society around the world. He is a senior lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. He is co-founder of the Presencing Institute. Through MITx and edX.org he currently delivers the U-Lab, a new type of social entrepreneurship MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that uses presencing practices of co-sensing and co-creating emerging futures with a platform of 25,000 participants from 191 countries that collaborate through more than 100 self-organized U.Lab Hubs across countries and cultures. Scharmer holds a PhD in economics and management from Witten-Herdecke University in Germany. For more information visit www.ottoscharmer.com or www.presencing.com.
Sharon Daloz Parks, author of Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World is a teacher/speaker, theorist, and consultant. For sixteen years she held faculty and research positions at Harvard University in the schools of Divinity, Business, and the Kennedy School of Government. She currently teaches at Seattle University and is a senior fellow at the Whidbey Institute. Her other writings include Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, and the co-authored, Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World.
Vusi Mahlasela is simply known as ‘The Voice’ in his home-country, South Africa. He is celebrated for his distinct, powerful voice and his poetic, optimistic lyrics. His songs of hope connect Apartheid-scarred South Africa with its promise for a better future. Raised in the Mamelodi Township, where he still resides, Vusi became a singer-songwriter and poet-activist at an early age teaching himself how to play guitar and later joining the Congress of South African Writers. After his popular debut on BMG Africa, “When You Come Back,” Vusi was asked to perform at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994. Vusi has released seven studio albums to-date and has toured globally and shared the stage with Dave Matthews Band, Sting, Paul Simon, Josh Groban, Ray LaMontagne, Natalie Merchant, Taj Mahal, among many others.
In light of his international and national acclaim, the SAMA Awards (South African Music Awards) honored Vusi with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. Vusi was proud to have been an ambassador to Nelson Mandela’s 46664 campaign (an awareness effort surrounding the HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa) and holds an honorary doctorate degrees from the prestigious Rhodes University in Grahamstown, SA and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Additionally, South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma awarded Vusi with the National Order of Ikhamanga, recognizing him for “drawing attention to the injustices that isolated South Africa from the global community during the Apartheid years.”
Agostine Ndung’u works to support entrepreneurs in Africa and around the world, to promote multi-ethnic cooperation and employment that will reduce youth participation in violation. To this end, he was worked for Ashoka in the global internship program and the fellows program, and he has worked for Impact Hub to set up programs in support of entrepreneurs in Africa. He is the founder of Audible Concepts and a former manager at Intellecap. He has worked extensively on the Sankalp Forum conventions for entrepreneur networking and fundraising both in Africa and in India.
Ndung’u is a graduate of Amherst College. As a student, he was named a Dalai Lama Fellow in 2011 to develop the Amani Seed Project in partnership with Baraka Agricultural College to promote inter-ethnic integration among rural youth in Kenya through agribusiness. He is currently a prospective Master of Business Administration candidate at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business in Canada.
Annan is an adjunct lecturer for the final year Entrepreneurship Capstone at Ashesi University and also a leadership faculty at Ashesi Innovation Experience. Annan holds an Master of Arts in applied economics with specialization in project management, innovation, and entrepreneurship economics. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Ashesi University. Annan has over 8 years of progressive experience in managing projects in education, oil and gas, technology, start-ups, and healthcare with projects and public presentations in Ghana, Senegal, USA, and Czech Republic and 6 years’ experience in the informal sector. Annan currently runs two companies in retail, transportation, and real estate. In 2013, he was named a Dalai Lama Fellow for his literacy and empowerment work.
Landa Mabenge is the author of Becoming Him – A Trans Memoir of Triumph. A University of Cape Town alumnus, he is the founder and managing director of Landa Mabenge Consulting, which creates awareness of the transgender experience. He is the first known transgender man in South Africa to receive medical aid to finance his gender alignment surgeries.
Mabenge has extensive experience working in the private and public health care sectors in South Africa, and uses this knowledge plus his personal journey to reach out to marginalised and impoverished communities. In 2017, he was selected for the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders in the USA. Mabenge now serves on the USAID’s youth advisory board and is a youth mentor at SAYes Youth Mentoring. He also serves as a non-executive board member for Transgender Intersex Africa (TIA), which advocates for the rights of transgender and intersex persons. He currently works for the Stellenbosch University Equality Unit.
