Dr. Anthony Zanesco is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Miami. He completed his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. His work investigates attention and mind wandering using behavioral and electrophysiological methods. One primary aspect of his research is focused on how attentional processes might be trained through meditation and mindfulness practices.
Brandon King, PhD is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Saron Lab at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain studying the effects of meditation training on empathy and emotional engagement with suffering. He is interested in how meditation training might shift motivational engagement with others’ suffering, as a possible antecedent for compassionate responding. In his dissertation research (also completed in the Saron Lab), Brandon employed measures of peripheral physiology and memory to examine the effects of a 3-month intensive meditation retreat on practitioners’ emotional responses to suffering in others. Brandon currently co-leads the Pathways Project—a study of how different contemplative training styles influence engagement with emotional stimuli depicting threats or harm to self and others. For this, he led the development of a novel stimulus set, informed by his work on his dissertation, that allows researchers to disambiguate responses to different classes of emotionally challenging stimuli. More broadly, he is interested in different approaches to meditation training and the role of intensive meditation retreats in contemplative practice. He hopes to understand and characterize what motivates people to meditate, how practitioners balance daily practice with more intensive forms of practice, and how the benefits of intensive practice are consolidated or integrated into everyday life.
David Sloan Wilson (SUNY Distinguished Professor, Binghamton University, USA) has made foundational contributions to Darwin’s theory of evolution. His work expands the horizon of evolutionary thinking beyond genetic evolution to include all of the fast-paced changes taking place around us (cultural evolution) and within us (each individual as an evolving entity). This expansion allows evolutionary theory to be related to religious and spiritual traditions more than ever before, including the necessity of an ethics for the whole world. Wilson’s most recent book, and the one most relevant to his conversation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution.
Mark T. Bertolini is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Aetna, a Fortune 50 diversified health care benefits company. Aetna serves approximately 44.7 million people with information and resources to help them make better informed decisions about their health care and has operations in North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Mr. Bertolini assumed the role of CEO on November 29, 2010 and of Chairman on April 8, 2011.
Mr. Bertolini joined Aetna in 2003 as head of Aetna’s Specialty Products. From July 2007 to December 2014, he served as president, responsible for all of Aetna’s businesses and operations across the company’s broad range of health care products and related services. Prior to joining Aetna, Mr. Bertolini held executive positions at Cigna, NYLCare Health Plans, and SelectCare, Inc., where he served as president and chief executive officer.
In 2016, Mr. Bertolini was recognized in the top four of Modern Healthcare’s 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for his efforts to promote measures that increase access, lower costs and improve quality. He meets regularly with state and federal policymakers to further these efforts and share Aetna’s vision for a consumer-centric healthcare system. Mr. Bertolini has also been recognized as a leader in corporate social responsibility for his historic decision to raise Aetna’s base wage to $16 per hour and reduce out-of-pocket medical expenses for low-income households. In recognition of this decision, he was named to Fortune’s 2015 list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders and also to the 2015 Politico 50.
Mr. Bertolini serves as a director of Verizon Communications Inc. (communications and technology solutions), Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (insurance and investment products), The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a non-profit organization founded by Paul Newman that serves children with cancer and other serious illnesses, and the FIDELCO Guide Dog Foundation, a non-profit organization that breeds, trains and places German Shepherd guide dogs with people who have visual disabilities.
Mr. Bertolini holds an undergraduate degree in business administration/finance from Wayne State University and a MBA in finance from Cornell University.
Mark Bertolini served on the Mind & Life Board of Directors from 2016 to 2019.
