Richard J. Davidson

William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry and Founder & Director of the Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Richard J Davidson is the founder and Chief Visionary for Healthy Minds Innovations, Inc.

Richard J Davidson received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology in 1976. Davidson’s research is broadly focused on the neural bases of emotion and emotional style and methods to promote human flourishing including meditation and related contemplative practices. He has published over 440 articles, numerous chapters and reviews and edited 14 books. He is the author (with Sharon Begley) of “The Emotional Life of Your Brain” published in 2012 and co-author with Daniel Goleman of “Altered Traits” published in 2017. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2006. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017 and appointed to the Governing Board of UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) in 2018. In 2014, Davidson founded the non-profit, Healthy Minds Innovations, which translates science into tools to cultivate and measure well-being.

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University, where she holds the South African National Research Foundation Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma and the Research Chair in Historical Trauma and Transformation. She is the 2020-2021 Walter Jackson Bate Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Her research interest is in historical trauma and its intergenerational repercussions and exploring what the “repair” of these transgenerational effects might mean. She has published extensively on victims and perpetrators of gross human rights violations, and on forgiveness and remorse. Her books include the critically acclaimed A Human Being Died that Night: A Story of Forgiveness, which has been published seven times, including translations in Dutch, German, Italian and Korean. She is editor and co-author of several other academic publications: Narrating our Healing: Perspectives on Healing Trauma as co-author with Chris van der Merwe; Memory, Narrative and Forgiveness: Perspectives on the Unfinished Journeys of the Past, as co-editor, Breaking Intergenerational Cycles of Repetition: A Global Dialogue on Historical Trauma and Memory, as editor; Post-Conflict Hauntings: Transforming Memories of Historical Trauma, as co-editor; and her recently published edited collection on Jewish-German dialogue, History, Trauma and Shame: Engaging the Past Through Second Generation Dialogue.

Gobodo-Madikizela is an engaged professional with interests extending beyond her academic specialty and she has delivered many public lectures, keynote and endowed lectures globally. Accolades for her work include the Alan Paton Award and the Christopher Award for her book A Human Being Died that Night; the Claude Ake Visiting Chair in the Peace and Conflict Research Department at Uppsala University, Sweden; Distinguished African Scholar at Cornell University’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies; and the Eleanor Roosevelt Award. In 1995 – 1998, she served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa and chaired the Human Rights Violations Committee and its public hearings in the Western Cape. In 2004, she was invited by the Faith & Politics Institute to facilitate a workshop/retreat on “Reconciliation Dialogue” for a group of members of the US House of Representatives at La Casa de Maria Retreat Centre, Santa Barbara, California. In 2005 she was included among “100 People who made a difference” in the Permanent Exhibit of the Hall of Heroes in the National Underground Railroad Freedom Centre in Cincinnati. In 2008 – 2010, she served on the World Economic Forum’s Council for Human Equality and Respect.

Failautusi ‘Tusi’ Avegalio

Papalii Dr Failautusi ‘Tusi’ Avegalio is the director of the multi national award winning Pacific Business Center Program (PBCP) and the executive director of the Honolulu Minority Business Enterprise Center (HMBEC) at the UH Mānoa Shidler College of Business. A former research fellow with the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center, Avegalio is the first native from Oceania to become a professor at the Shidler College of Business. 

He has consulted extensively for traditional chiefs, village councils, governments, colleges and universities, financial institutions, multi-national corporations and businesses nationally and internationally. He also has been the primary organiser of many events, such as the University of Hawai‘i Stars of Oceania to recognise the contributions of Pacific Islanders to the State, Nation and World inaugurated in 2006 with most recent event in American Samoa in 2017, and Regional & Global Breadfruit Summits in American Samoa (2013), Hawai‘i (2016), and the recent 2017 Breadfruit Summit in Apia, Samoa. Dr Tusi has a doctorate in educational administration from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is a Polynesian alii and senior heir of the Malietoa warrior king line of Samoa holding the traditional title of ‘Papali’i’ from Savaii, Samoa.

Grandmother Láné Saan Moonwalker

Láné Sáan Moonwalker has been an oracle, healer, spiritual teacher and environmental guardian for close to 50 years. She began her training in the healing arts at the age of 12 from friends and family members who were highly skilled curanderas (traditional practitioners who combine Native, Catholic, and African spiritual beliefs and practices). In 1987, she met her main teacher Tu Moonwalker, an Apache, the great great granddaughter of Cochise through his son Naiche, and Naiche’s daughter Doraté Moonwalker. This lineage is about a medicine way of Being. Tu was the holder of this unbroken Moonwalker lineage and Láné is an acknowledged part of that lineage. She herself is from an unbroken lineage through her Yoeme grandmother. Working with Tu helped Láné manifest her vision to train teachers, healers, oracles, and leaders in their own right. Together Tu and Láné founded the Philosophy of Universal Beingness within the Whole. The foundation of this system is about working with nature in a sacred way. Both Tu and Láné understood that if you don’t take care of the Earth there is no basis for anything else. 

Láné Sáan Moonwalker is also internationally recognized and has traveled to Japan, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Canada, Mexico, and throughout the United States as part of her work. She sits on the International Council of Elders for the Aniwa Gathering. Láne holds a degree in humanities and the visual arts from the University of Colorado. She has been a licensed minister for more than thirty-eight years, and is a Reverend Canon in the Brigade of Light.

Dr. Barry Kerzin

Dr. Barry Kerzin is an American physician and Buddhist monk. He serves as a personal physician to the 14th Dalai Lama, along with treating people in the local community.

He has written Tibetan Buddhist Prescription for Happiness, and with the Dalai Lama and Professor Tonagawa, Mind and Matter: Dialogue between Two Nobel Laureates. He has also written Nagarjuna’s Wisdom: A Guide to Practice, Compassion-Bridging Practice and Science and No Fear No Death: The Transformative Power of Compassion.

Barry Kerzin is an ADJUNCT PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, a Visiting Professor at Central University of Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, India, an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and a former Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington.

Barry is a fellow at the Mind and Life Institute and consults for the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig on compassion training. He is the founder and president of the Altruism in Medicine Institute (AIMI) and the founder and chairman of the Human Values Institute (HVI) in Japan.

Satish Kumar

Peace-pilgrim, life-long activist and former monk, Satish Kumar has been inspiring global change for over 50 years. Aged 9, Satish renounced the world and joined the wandering Jain monks. Inspired by Gandhi, he decided at 18 that he could achieve more back in the world and soon undertook a peace-pilgrimage, walking without money from India to America in the name of nuclear disarmament. Now in his 80s, Satish has devoted his life to campaigning for ecological regeneration, social justice and spiritual fulfilment.

Satish founded Schumacher College as well as The Resurgence Trust, an educational charity that seeks a just future for all. To join Satish in protecting people and planet, become a member of Resurgence (with 20% off), entitling you to this charity’s change-making magazine, Resurgence & Ecologist.

Satish appears regularly on podcasts, radio and television shows. He has been interviewed by Richard Dawkins, Russell Brand and Annie Lennox, appearing as a guest on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Thought for the Day and Midweek. Satish presented an episode of BBC2’s Natural World documentary series, which was watched by 3.6 million people. An acclaimed international speaker and author, Satish’s autobiography sold over 50,000 copies, inspiring change around the world.

Rhonda Magee

Professor Rhonda V. Magee is a teacher of mindfulness-based stress reduction interventions for lawyers, law students, and for minimizing social-identity-based bias. A full-time faculty member at University of San Francisco since 1998, and a full professor since 2004, she has been named Dean’s Circle Research Scholar, served as co-director of the University’s Center for Teaching Excellence, and co-facilitator of the Ignatian Faculty Forum faculty development program. She teaches Torts; Race, Law and Policy; and courses in Contemplative and Mindful Law and Law Practice. She is a trained and highly practiced facilitator, with an emphasis on mindful communication, trained through programs at the University of Massachusetts’s School of Medicine’s Oasis Teacher Training Institute, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business Facilitator Training Program. In April 2015, she was named a fellow of the Mind and Life Institute.