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Bruce Gill is a partner with Inter-Change Consultants. His areas of focus include Organizational Development, leadership development, diversity/inclusion, social-emotional learning and training. Bruce has worked with a broad range of organizations as a diversity consultant. His client work includes American Express, National Institutes of Health, Ernst & Young, and Lucent Technologies. Some of his specific work includes issues pertaining to cross-cultural communication and senior leadership coaching. |
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Meara Hayden is 16 years old and lives in Perkasie, Pennsylvania with two sisters, a brother, and a mother who regularly practices mindfulness meditation. She first encountered meditation when her brother coerced her into attending her first retreat at 14, and has taken to meditation practice better than she expected to. She works with teens every day as an officer and the clarinet section leader of her high school marching band. She hopes to go to a college with an unbeatable music program in the fall of 2013. |
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Leslie Lytle, the mother of a teen who has attended iBme retreats, was introduced to mindfulness meditation practice in the late 1980’s. She is founder and director of OmMama, LLC, a Richmond, Virginia based business offering yoga classes and evidence-based childbirth education for women and families in their childbearing years and training for professionals who serve this audience. She previously served on the board of William Byrd Community House, a non-profit that works with at-risk youth and families in Richmond, Virginia. |
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Maury Cooke is the founder of the Center for Community Development, Inc. and was also a founding sponsor of iBme. A highly respected community leader in southeast Virginia, he has served as a local bank president and started or rebuilt many businesses. Since CCDI’s founding in 1990, Maury and staff have created programs responsible for affordable housing and microfinancing, the Urban Arts Center, which trains young people in creative expression, and Earthsong Organic Farm & Retreat Center. Maury has been meditating intensively since 1973. |
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Marvin G. Belzer, PhD, has taught mindfulness meditation for over fifteen years and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center. For many years he taught a semester-long meditation course in the Department of Philosophy at Bowling Green St. University, where he was a Professor of philosophy. He and Diana Winston were instrumental in developing week-long mindfulness retreats for teens in the mid-1990s. |
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Doug Worthen currently teaches a mindfulness course at the Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts. He has completed the .b mindfulness teacher training, the Still Quiet Place teacher training, and the MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) teacher training practicum at the University of Massachusetts. He began practicing mindfulness meditation in 1999 as a member of the UVA national championship lacrosse team and has been a dedicated practitioner ever since. Living through two bouts of lymphoma, which included a bone marrow transplant in 2007, Doug has experienced firsthand the healing power of mindfulness. Read about Doug’s classes at Middlesex. |
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Tempel Smith has been practicing mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation since 1989. Tempel launched the West Coast teen retreat program and helped to launch the teen retreats in Virginia. He is a graduate of the teacher-training program at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California and regularly leads teen and young adult retreats in California and Virginia. |
