Movement
Dharma

Vaishali Mamgain, Ph.D. retired as an Associate Professor of Economics and the Director of the Bertha Crosley Ball Center for Compassion from the University of Southern Maine (2017–2026). She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; her past research focused on the contributions of (im)migrants and refugees in the Maine economy; her current research is in contemplative pedagogy.

A leader in contemplative education, she is passionate about deconstructing epistemology and incorporating contemplative practices to help educators create a more creative and joyful learning environment. She also facilitates compassion training and anti-oppression workshops for corporate and nonprofit organizations in the US and abroad, specializing in somatic and immersive nature training to undo oppression and help envision more equitable, loving societies.

She served on the Board of Directors of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and is faculty and a Board member of the Courage of Care Coalition, where she designs and facilitates trauma-informed courses. A working contemplative, she completed a three-year meditation retreat at Samten Ling Retreat Center in 2017 and now lives on an island in Maine.

Adam Lobel, Ph.D., MDiv, holds a doctorate in Religious Studies from Harvard University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School, where he helped develop a program in Buddhist Ministry. As a meditation teacher and scholar-practitioner of philosophy and religion, Adam's teachings focus on contemporary thought, Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism, ecopsychology, and transformational politics.

A professor of ecopsychology and Buddhist psychology, he is a Guiding Teacher for One Earth Sangha, where he teaches EcoSattva Training and co-facilitates a course supporting modern Buddhist teachers in developing a radical, responsive Ecodharma. As a GreenFaith fellow, he is active in ecological and social justice movements.

Adam served as an acharya in the Shambhala community from 2005 until resigning in 2018. He lives in Pittsburgh with his partner and two sons, teaches at Chatham University, and resists the petrochemical buildout in his region. Learn more.

Maha El-Sheikh is the Co-Director of Courage of Care. With 20 years working in the international humanitarian sector, Maha's work focuses on the social injustices underlying our global crises. As a facilitator, she is inspired by 15 years living and working in Palestine and Lebanon, learning how connection to heart, beloved community, mutual aid, joy, and compassion can serve as antidotes to oppression, colonization, injustice, and violence.

She supports people working in the aid sector to find sustainable ways of working in the face of ongoing violence and destruction, and to seek alignment—personally and professionally—with values of love and liberation. Maha co-founded the first non-profit, volunteer-run yoga center in Palestine and brings experience in trauma-informed yoga, somatics, and meditation to explore healing, social transformation, and justice.

She has mentored numerous individuals on their healing and facilitation journeys. Maha's approach is warm, spacious, and devotional, guiding people toward healing with gentle and direct insights.

Katie Robinson (any pronouns) is a writer, facilitator, scholar, and interdisciplinary artist devoted to exploring what is present and possible outside of the white supremacist colonial imagination. Their essay, "Here's How I Let Them Come Close," was featured in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars from Milkweed in 2023.

Their recently completed dissertation, Toward a New Metaphysics of Political Struggle: Explorations into Abolitionist Subjectivities, explores abolitionist praxis as an ontological project—examining how Minneapolis-based abolitionists enact decolonial, relational worlds through creative anti-carceral practice amid escalating political violence.

Katie is a core facilitator at Courage of Care, a non-profit focused on nurturing a competent and caring field of relational facilitators committed to tending to movements for justice and liberation. More about Katie.

Joseph (Joe) Loizzo, MD, PhD is a contemplative psychotherapist, clinical researcher, and Buddhist scholar-teacher who integrates ancient contemplative science with breakthroughs in neuroscience and optimal health. After training in psychiatry at Harvard and completing a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies at Columbia, he founded Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, which trains people in contemplative skills informed by practical neuropsychology to cultivate a wise mind, warm heart, and altruistic way of life.

On faculty at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Columbia University Center for Buddhist Studies, Dr. Loizzo lectures on meditative learning in the future of health, education, and leadership. He teaches at Nalanda Institute, Tibet House US, and Nalanda Institute hubs internationally, and has published widely on contemplative science.

His books include Nagarjuna's Reason Sixty with Chandrakirti's Commentary, Sustainable Happiness, and Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy. He has a private psychotherapy practice and lives with his family.

Sumitra Rajkumar cut her movement-building teeth in the racial justice uprisings of the mid-90s. The fierce collective dignity of those times instilled a lifelong commitment to justice. Over multiple decades, she has produced documentary work with youth, run intergenerational popular and political education workshops, supported a range of groups, and continued to innovate a politicized somatics practice connecting embodied values to social transformation.

She has applied this fifteen-year practice to leadership development and therapeutic support for organizers, cultural workers, and social justice organizations. Sumitra now works at The Action Lab at the intersection of educational and cultural strategy through training methodology for social movements. Her labor of love is The Art of Purpose, a fellowship weaving together the political, emotive, and creative as an organizing force toward a better world.