Dr. Felipe Mercado is a professor in the Department of Social Work at California State University, Fresno, and the founder of Wise Soul LLC, a consulting firm focused on integrating compassion and wellness into education and community settings. Dr. Mercado’s career spans over two decades and includes roles as an elementary school principal, counselor, social worker, and curriculum designer. He earned his doctorate in Educational Leadership, bringing a wealth of experience from diverse positions within the education and mental health fields.

Dr. Mercado’s professional journey began with hands-on roles in underserved communities, where he developed programs to address trauma and promote resilience among youth. He later advanced these practices as a school principal, where he pioneered the Wise Compassionate Framework, significantly reducing suspension rates and fostering supportive, inclusive school cultures.

A published author, Dr. Mercado’s book, A Journey to Compassion: Learning to Stand Firm in the Face of Pain, has become a six-time Amazon bestseller and received an International Award for Most Inspirational Book. Dr. Mercado’s dedication to compassionate leadership is evident in his collaborations with national and international organizations, including the Compassion Institute and the World Happiness Academy. Through his teaching, writing, and community engagement, he continues to inspire and equip individuals and institutions to promote empathy, resilience, and equity in all areas of life. For more information on his initiatives, visit wise-souls.com.

Dr. Mahlobo is a multicultural psychologist and mindfulness practitioner dedicated to rewriting the narrative around Black youth by centering their flourishing. As a researcher, Christa has found that culturally salient mindfulness and arts and humanities interventions are crucial in increasing flourishing, especially for Black Americans who face daily mind-body impacts of racism. With an interest in exploring how mindfulness practices can be adapted to meet the unique needs of the Black community, Christa is excited to deepen her knowledge and skills through the Global Majority Leadership and Mentorship program. Through this program, Christa hopes to cultivate culturally salient and equitable mindfulness programs and use her research to make a positive impact in her local community.

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Rui Seabra Machado is a Brazilian of African descent, hailing from Salvador-Bahia, the city with the largest Afro-Brazilian community. While living in Uruguaiana, Rio Grande do Sul, Rui has been dedicated to helping his community through contemplative practices, especially for vulnerable children. He is married to his beloved wife Gláucia and has a daughter, Maria Clara. Rui is completing his thesis this year, which showcases the positive effects of contemplation on teachers and students within the Brazilian educational system. His goal is to nurture collaborative contemplative research with compassionate interventions involving other university campuses to combat discrimination and prejudice. Participating in the mentoring program will enable Rui to prepare himself better to share his knowledge with his community and propose a collaborative research project to implement centers of contemplative practice in universities and public schools.

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Mansi Brat is an academic dedicated to promoting social justice and anti-racist action. Her current research lines include mindfulness-based programs, anti-racist scholarship, counselor professional identity and advocacy, postmodernist theories, and contemplative sciences. She is particularly interested in examining how mindfulness-based programs support social justice activism in counseling practitioners, supervisors, and trainees. Mansi is also focused on developing a line of scholarship on children and youth raised in marginalized families and their lack of access to mental health care and social integration skills. Her teaching and mentorship focus on encouraging students to connect and apply their knowledge to their lived experiences, promoting social justice among historically disenfranchised groups. She intentionally creates coursework that contextualizes how the information students are learning is applicable to their daily lives and how an understanding of multiculturalism is crucial for providing social justice-informed mental health services.

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Maha Al-Suwaidi (she/her) is a graduate student currently in the Health Psychology program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a certified yoga teacher (RYT200). As a Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern woman, she is acutely aware of the impact of colonialism and systemic oppression on minoritized communities and is committed to collective action to advocate for systemic change and communal healing. Her research aims to examine how structural factors (e.g., racism, poverty) contribute to mental health disparities, and identify modifiable, scalable tools (e.g., mindfulness, physical activity) that can bolster mental and physical health equity among structurally disadvantaged groups. Overall, her scholarship is rooted in a desire to decrease equity gaps in mental health research, with a focus on increasing the accessibility and cultural competency of psychological treatment for minoritized groups.

Ram Mahalingam received his PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. He was originally trained as a civil engineer and held more than 12 different jobs (math tutor, film script writer, children’s theater activist, poet, writer, lecturer, night watchman, dish washer, cook, book stacker and preschool teacher) including being a structural engineer for 8 years before becoming a psychologist. He is currently Professor of Psychology in the Personality and Social Contexts program at the University of Michigan. He is also a core faculty member of the Psychology and Women’s Studies Joint PhD program. He was the Director for the Honors Program in Psychology department and the founding Director for the Accelerated Master’s Degree Program in Psychology. He is currently the Director for the Barger Leader Institute.

His research is centered around intersectionality – the way that different identities we embody intersect shape how we make sense of our lives. In his empirical work, he conceptualizes intersectionality in three distinct ways (Mahalingam & Rabelo, 2013). First, he explores intersectionality as a lived experience, focusing on encounters and stressors for those with marginalized identities based on gender, ethnicity, religion, caste, sexuality, occupation, and class. Second, he studies intersectionality as identities in contexts. For example, he studied how intersecting ecological contexts shape beliefs about gender in communities with a history of female infanticide (Mahalingam, 2007b). Third, he views intersectionality as a critical social awareness of privilege and marginality for differing identities. This rich conceptualization of intersectionality connects his specific research projects to answer broader questions. With this overarching framework, He pursues three lines of research: (a) Dignity and Invisibility in workplace with a specific focus on janitors in India, US and South Korea; (b) Mindfulness, social justice and leadership with a specific focus on interconnectedness; (c) Relationship between cell phones and self. He is the Director for the Mindful Connections Lab.

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Steven Thurston Oliver, Professor and Department Chair: Secondary and Higher Education at Salem State University, is a Sociologist of Education whose research and expertise is focused on using Contemplative Pedagogy in K-12 teacher preparation and higher education programs as a catalyst for cultivating greater capacity among educators to engage across human differences.  Steven received a Ph.D. in Sociology of Education from New York University, a M.Ed. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Washington, and a B.A. in International Affairs from Antioch College.  Recent publications include: Dealing with Things as They Are: Engaging Students in Dialogue about Race and Hurtful Chapters of U.S. History, Understanding and Teaching American Slavery, and Queer-spectrum and Trans-spectrum People Out of the Shadows: The Institutional Imperative for Building Inclusive Campus Communities. Major Challenges Facing Senior Leaders in Higher Education. Steven and his husband Jonathan live in Lowell with their dog Batu who was rescued by the Sato Project in Puerto Rico.

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Malena Price is a fourth-year Clinical Psychology PhD student at the University of Miami studying the impacts of mindfulness training on psychological health outcomes, such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD. She is currently completing a practicum position at Galen Hope Mental Health where she supports the psychological recovery of patients living with eating disorders and complex co-occuring conditions. Prior to beginning her doctorate, Malena completed a Fulbright Research Grant in Amman, Jordan where she provided psychosocial support to Sudanese refugees seeking asylum there. After she completes her doctoral studies, Malena will work for a humanitarian organization bringing evidence-based psychological services to individuals suffering from acute psychological symptoms in crisis settings. Malena is also a 300-hour Registered Yoga Teacher, a proficient Arabic speaker, and a mindfulness practitioner.

Yikai is a PhD candidate in Clinical/Counseling psychology at the Culture, Emotion, and Health Lab at New York University and a member of Mind & Life’s Research and Program Council. His research interests primarily focus on the cultural differences in the cognitive and emotional processes underlying adaptive coping and psychological well-being.  Currently, Yikai is investigating how contemplative wisdom beliefs (e.g., interdependence, impermanence) shape the beliefs we have about emotions, how we regulate our emotions, and the downstream psychological health outcomes across cultures. He is also interested in leveraging a mixed-method approach to translate the basic science findings into feasible, efficacious, and accessible mental health interventions. He aims to promote equitable access to quality mental health services among underserved communities on the individual level as well as the policy level.