Dr. Sará Yafah King is a neuroscientist, medical anthropologist, artist, political and learning scientist, education philosopher, social impact entrepreneur, and life-long student of dance, yoga, and the dharma. She has completed 200 and 300 hr. YTT's, as well as a year-long mindfulness meditation teacher training from Spirit Rock in Marin, CA. She is also the CEO and Co-Founder of MindHeart, a consulting and liberatory technology company dedicated to advancing collective well-being, intergenerational and planetary healing by bridging the embodiment of beloved community and collective-healing with AI."

Dr. King is the author of “The Science of Social Justice” framework for research and facilitation exploring a biopsychosocial framing of the ways in which social justice and well-being are the same phenomena, and the inventor of the “Systems Based Awareness Map” (SBAM) - the world’s first theoretical map of human awareness - which she developed to explore our capacity to heal intergenerational trauma and promote the well-being of "collective nervous systems”. 

She has utilized these frameworks to create custom keynotes, seminars, and consultations bridging neuroscience, art, music, and embodiment practices for collective healing for fortune 500 companies, major philanthropic organizations, and in her work supporting neuroscience and trauma-informed  abolitionist narratives and experiential design with major fine arts museums such as the Getty Museum; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Huntington Museum; the Brooklyn Museum, and the Ford Foundation’s world renowned art gallery.

Kierstin Gray is an artist, inventor, musician, strategist and entrepreneur. Born in Memphis, TN, and raised between Southern traditions and the vibrant cultures of Kenya, Kierstin integrates a global perspective shaped by extensive travel, diverse cultural exchanges, and deep roots in ancestral wisdom, storytelling, music, and craft.

She holds an AB in Film & Cultural Studies from Bryn Mawr College, and an MS in Strategic Design & Management from Parsons School of Design. Certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP©) and Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP©), Kierstin has spent over 20 years in corporate and organizational spaces leading strategic initiatives, tech implementations, and integrated marketing campaigns for premier global brands, agencies and institutions. 

She is also a celebrated touring musician with 7 global album releases, performing as featured artist and songwriter for numerous festivals, causes and events including The Newport Folk Festival, The Philadelphia Folk Festival, The NOW March for Equity, Hearts & Voices: Musicians fighting AIDS, and more. Her music has been featured in television and film as well as part of art exhibits, installations, educational healing practices, youth initiatives and recovery programs across the United States. 

Whatever the avenue of creativity, Kierstin’s works have always centered on creating experiences rooted in the spirit of friendship. It is key element for designing experiences, processes and systems that foster community resilience, compassionate leadership, and creative expression. Her vision is to build a world where justice, innovation, and empathy thrive in equal measure, ensuring personal and collective success never comes at the expense of any community.

Barnaby Willett is a contemplative educator, mindfulness teacher, and futurist who is passionate about exploring both our unity and uniqueness through contemplative practices, dialogue, and technology. He has studied and practiced with teachers from various traditions including Zen Buddhism, Nonduality, Jungian psychology, and Sufi Islam. His primary studies have been with Toni Packer, Peter Fenner, Caverly Morgan, Jeffrey Raff, and Eric Winkel. As a Garrison Institute Fellow, Barnaby focuses on developing the contemplative practice of ally work as a catalyst for personal and collective transformation.

Barnaby was instrumental in creating the first mindfulness class in U.S. public high schools with the nonprofit Peace in Schools in 2014. He taught the semester-long course to over 700 students as a Lead Teacher and served as Director of Innovation and Partnerships. He also led a research partnership with Johns Hopkins University to develop an award-winning study – the first globally to research mindfulness and childhood trauma (ACEs) in youth. Barnaby also serves as a mindfulness teacher with the nonprofit iBme (Inward Bound Mindfulness Education) on their transformative teen mindfulness retreats.

He has presented at numerous institutions, including Johns Hopkins University, University of Oregon, Portland State University, Wisdom 2.0, Bridging Hearts and Minds, Science and Nonduality Conference, the Garrison Institute, and Esalen.

Nichol Chase is an educator, program leader, and multi-lineage contemplative teacher specializing in resilience science, trauma-informed care, and embodied wisdom practices. She has long-standing, wide-ranging experience designing and facilitating research-backed trainings that integrate mindfulness, movement, and music—equipping individuals and communities with tools to navigate stress, heal from trauma, and thrive in times of change.

Her work is informed by a rich artistic background as a classically trained ballerina and opera singer, bringing depth, creativity, and a unique aesthetic sensibility to her teaching. Nichol’s training spans multiple traditions, including Iyengar, Ashtanga, and Anusara yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and iRest Yoga Nidra, as well as study with Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Richard Miller, David Treleaven, Noah Mazé, Douglas Brooks, Annie Carpenter, and Richard Rosen. She is the founder of the Wisdom Building Method School and creator of a 300-hour advanced trauma-informed yoga teacher training. Her expertise bridges science and contemplative wisdom, with a focus on the autonomic nervous system, stress physiology, and the mind-body connection.

A sought-after presenter, Nichol has taught and facilitated programs for institutions such as UCSF, Spirit Rock, Kripalu, Esalen, and the Garrison Institute, where she also serves as a Fellow and CBR Faculty member. As a musician, writer, and facilitator, she brings warmth, precision, and a trauma-informed approach to every teaching space—whether leading retreats, developing curricula, or coaching individuals toward inner transformation.

Andrew Villamil is an Industry Consultant and Well-Being Scientist with an expansive academic background. Having completed a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology, and his second masters in Positive Organizational Psychology. He is now a PhD Candidate in the Positive Developmental Psychology Program at Claremont Graduate University. He is also an Advisor and Faculty to the World Happiness Foundation, a Fellow at the American Council of Education and Carnegie Foundation for Public Leadership, and a Garrison Institute Fellow.

For over 14 years, Andrew has worked in Industry, Technology, Healthcare, and Higher Education where he delved deep into operations involving technological management, international Research, Higher Education, Technical Projects, Clinical Programs and Interventions. His work centers on the pivotal synergy between foundational research and translational, real-world applications.

In his academic career, Andrew has collaborated with some of the most venerated minds in psychology across five leading research labs. These labs probe into a spectrum of topics, including Subjective Well-Being and Happiness, Love, Cognitive Psychology, Interpersonal Neurobiology, Organizational Psychology, Anxiety and Depression, Technology, Identity and Culture, Systems and Developmental Research.

Andrew strives to decipher the intricate mechanisms in well-being, and the psychological mechanisms that shape application. Drawing from extensive experience in Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs), Contemplative practices, Technology, Health Psychology, and emotional regulation, he is on a mission to design and integrate technology experiences with subjective well-being. 

As a well-being scientist, Andrew brings his unique background in psychology and Academia and his experience in consulting with business, technology, and industry. Known for his research skills both internationally and in education settings, his main goal is to understand how to weave positive human centered design to support  innovative experiences.

Anu Gupta is an award-winning author, educator, lawyer, scientist, and meditation teacher. His bestselling book, Breaking Bias: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From and the Science-Backed Method to Unravel Them (2024), features a foreword from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and offers mindfulness-based tools to heal from bias, trauma, and disconnection. Through his work, Anu envisions an Earth where humans awaken to their interdependence and cultivate the wisdom and compassion needed to transcend bias, exclusion, and othering.

He is also the founder and CEO of BE MORE with Anu, an edtech company that helps organizations foster trust, safety, and belonging to drive retention, performance, and profitability. His work has reached over 300 organizations, training more than 100,000 professionals and impacting 30 million lives.

Anu holds a JD from NYU Law, an MPhil in Development Studies from Cambridge, and a BA in International Relations and Islamic Studies from NYU. He has lived, studied, and worked globally, including as a Fulbright Scholar in South Korea, a student of Spanish in Mexico, a champion for women’s rights at the UN, and the founder of a nonprofit in Burma.

A lifetime Fellow of the Mind & Life Institute and Penn State Dickinson Law School's Antiracist Development Institute, Anu is also a dedicated meditation practitioner. With over 10,000 hours spent on retreat across the U.S. and Asia, his practice deeply informs his commitment to collective healing. He lives in New York City with his partner and their thriving indoor jungle of plants. Learn more: bemorewithanu.com, @anuguptany

Aden is an entrepreneur, community-weaver, strategist, and optimist who spent the last decade enabling more compassionate and just technology from within start-up, government, and academic settings. She founded Mobius in 2018 after a year as a Resident Fellow at Harvard Divinity School focusing on the intersection of tech, ethics, spirituality and justice. Prior to that, she was a Senior Advisor in the Obama Administration's White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she developed and led programs that use tech as a tool to address inequality. She is also a former Affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and on Data & Society’s Healthy Tech Advisory Board.

Before focusing on tech, Aden worked in social enterprise and impact investing, first at the social venture capital fund, Acumen, in both New York and Nairobi, and then at an affordable housing start-up in Delhi, India. She was also part of the founding leadership team of The Sanctuaries, a racially and religiously diverse spiritual community, rooted in the arts and social justice. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, New York Times, Wired and elsewhere.

Born in Santa Barbara, CA, Davion Starchild Ziere (aka Zi) is eldest of 10 children and attended 13 schools before starting Stanford at 14 and Emory at 16. By 15, he had paged for the U.S. House of Reps, performed with a national award-winning choir, been offered major recording deals by RCA and Def Jam, and developed youth curricula for the National Children’s Defense Fund. Raised from ATL and Jackson, MS to East Oakland and South Africa, Zi saw that people weren’t empowered to truly live while alive. Committed to being the change, he dedicated his life to servant leadership, later learning from innate wisdom, black grandmothers, and never before been colonized tribes from across the world, and becoming a co-founder of the liberatory technology frameworks and ecosystem which emerged during his time as co-director at Mobius, a home institute for liberatory tech that centers ancient, indigenous, and marginalized voices. Today, he is focused on stewarding trust, art, land, sanctuary and community with a base in one of the world’s wonders: stone mountain, GA. With over ten years of experience as a serial post-growth entrepreneur, student and chief, Zi is a community-oriented servant leader who listens deeply, responds through values-aligned advocacy and strategy, and drafts policies for models where all diverse stakeholders are valued equitably. Zi is passionate about cultivating visions and systems that value and respect well-being in all forms of life.

Prior to joining Mobius, Zi was the founder and head of community at Origyn, an online community-based marketplace that sources from traditionally marginalized suppliers, empowers consumers to track their economic footprint, and reinvests back into the communities as they grow. Zi led the 10X growth of Origyn month over month, prior to its exit in 2023, and turned down misaligned millions from investors who were not aligned with the organization's values. Before Origyn, Zi founded Culturebase, the world’s first culturally centered AI where he was able to attract and co-create with the original creators of IBM’s Watson AI. He has been a community advisory board member at Emory University, where he co-established the community direction and strategy for the Quantitative Theories and Methods Department, as well as developed Rites of Passage curriculum for middle and high school students across Atlanta. Zi has written extensively on trust, money, models that are holistically aligned, and is a recording artist, alchemist, systems architect, published author, speaker, and bridge builder who practices holistic embodiment of the world he wishes to live in.

Belief: Zi believes in we. Zi believes in love as the root for trust and trust as the route for the loving worlds we imagine. Zi also believes there is no trust without truth, so we must tell the truths of our past and present, centering the most marginalized in what we create for the future as a way to know and forward let acknowledge the deepest pains and share in resetting the scales of balance of our time.

@ocgv_sound

Orlando Carlos Villarraga is a sound artist, composer, and musician who blends ancient and modern practices, integrating organic and digital instruments to create immersive spaces for meditation and reflection. His work draws inspiration from a deep connection to the Teyuna indigenous cultures of Colombia, as well as contemporary sound meditation practices he has explored through mentorship with the Resonance Group. By combining grounded, earth-based sounds with electronic elements and soundscapes, Orlando's art creates a bridge between the past, present, and future, allowing listeners to experience new perspectives on emotional and spiritual connection.

Orlando's professional journey includes creating two albums in collaboration with MoMA New York, as part of a research project on human well-being with MindHeart. He also launched a sound meditation and course on "belonging" through MoMA’s educational platform, which was exhibited at the museum in the winter of 2024. 

Selma Quist-Møller is a mother, licensed psychologist, researcher, and globally recognized expert in post-traumatic growth (PTG). Her work lives at the intersection of science, social & planetary healing, and contemplative practice. Trained as a trauma psychologist in Denmark, Selma integrates interpersonal neurobiology, mindfulness, compassion, embodiment, and community-oriented approaches to explore how generative action and connection can support healing from collective, cultural, and intergenerational trauma.

A lifelong student of both the mind and the heart, Selma was mentored by Dr. Dan Siegel and is a 2020-2022 Garrison Institute Fellow, recognized as part of a new generation of leaders in collective healing and post-traumatic growth. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Copenhagen University and is currently continuing her research as a PhD at the Medical School of Copenhagen University, researching inequality in health care and community-centered approaches to complex trauma recovery in primary care.

Selma has shared her research and practices around the world - from the Danish Parliament and the Global Post-Traumatic Growth Summit, to Wisdom 2.0, the Compassion Revolution in Australia, and companies such as PwC and Bang & Olufsen. She serves as Lead Psychologist in Post-Traumatic Growth Research and Practice at LetsReimagine.org and sits on advisory boards for several mental health and tech startups focused on trauma-informed innovation.

Raised in a family of artists and yoga teachers, Selma has maintained an arts and mindfulness practice since childhood. She is certified in Compassionate Leadership and brings a deep commitment to equity, tenderness, and growth into all aspects of her work. Her mission is to help build systems rooted in compassion, justice, and embodied interconnection, so that healing is not only possible, but accessible to all.

Garrett King is a practicing dentist and Co-Owner of Penrod Dental Care in Rancho Santa Margarita, California, an ocean and outdoor enthusiast, and a lover of  photography and art. Dr. King has also spent time in tech, working with computer vision and machine learning scientists doing data collection to train dental AI models. He completed his BA in philosophy at the University of California, San Diego prior to obtaining his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree at the University of California, Los Angeles where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and as a member of the Omikron Kappa Upsilon dental honor society. After completion of his DDS, Dr. King spent one year in his general practice residency at the VA Long Beach Healthcare System before moving to private practice. He is a practitioner of meditation and strives to place mindfulness and empathy at the center of his practice, understanding that all humans have individual needs, and that clinical care cannot be approached with a one-size-fits-all mentality.

Katie Rouse is a pupil of life, unremitting hype-woman, and self-proclaimed data wizard and guardian. 

After growing up in Northern New Jersey, she found herself in Chattanooga, TN, enamored by access to the outdoors and a budding technological ecosystem. Her Northern Attitude smoothed out by Southern Charm has made her a particularly effective communicator with a good sense of humor. 

She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science - Bioinformatics and Master’s in Computer Science - Data Science. As an undergraduate, she co-founded the Girls In Computer Science organization to promote inclusivity in the field and provide outreach programs to local high schools. Her graduate work included research with the Center for Urban Informatics and Progress, a smart city and urbanization research center at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. 

She currently works as the Data Scientist for an indie video game company, working with Player Safety and Hack Prevention teams to create safe spaces and foster connections in online communities. She also acts as a Data Advisor for a holistic healing and wellness startup to help establish best practices for the AI age and create viable data solutions with minimal data collection, physical resources, and energy consumption. Her expertise ranges from Data Engineering, Database Architecture, Data Science and Advanced Statistics, ML Operations, and AI product development. 

To combat the amount of time she spends in front of a computer screen, Katie has spent the last decade learning how to take care of her mind, body, and spirit. She balanced her indoor time in graduate school by training for and completing the 144.6 mile Chattanooga Ironman. Currently, she contrasts long meditative hikes, trail runs, and swims, with rugby and Brazilian jujitsu. When she’s not bearing the weight of the future of human data history on her shoulders she can be found globe trotting, throwing clay, brewing kombucha, and growing gardens.

Jackie Armstrong brings deep expertise at the intersection of the arts, well-being, and trauma-informed practice. As Director of Creative Vision, Research & Impact at MindHeart Collective, she helps shape the organization’s vision, strategy, and partnerships—co-designing trauma-informed, arts-based programs grounded in healing justice, contemplative neuroscience, and liberatory praxis. She also leads evaluation and research efforts, ensuring that MindHeart’s work is community-responsive, inclusive, and grounded in lived experience.

Alongside her role at MindHeart, Jackie serves as a full-time Associate Educator for Visitor Research & Experience at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where she conceived and leads Artful Practices for Well-Being. This initiative—anchored by a global Coursera course and in-gallery activations—integrates contemplative practice, creative exercises, and trauma-informed frameworks to support collective well-being. At MoMA, she collaborates across departments to evaluate exhibitions, participatory programs, interpretive resources and more, always centering the visitor experience. As well, she frequently designs various experiences and resources, such as the Slow Looking itinerary, Social Access Guide, a few Kids labels and other in-gallery and online offerings.

Jackie’s work is widely recognized in the field: she has presented at MCN, AAM, VSA, MuseumNext, and NYCMER, and her writing frequently appears in publications such as the Journal of Museum Education. Beyond MoMA, she consults internationally with museums, cultural organizations, and universities on trauma-informed practice, accessibility, and arts-based well-being. She has received multiple awards for her contributions to visitor research and inclusive practice, and continues to pioneer ways the arts can foster healing, connection, and belonging.

Increasingly, Jackie draws on her personal experiences with trauma, mental health and neurodivergence, using her insights, knowledge and research to advocate for others and inform her work inside and outside the museum and arts fields. Outside of work you can find Jackie spending quality time with loved ones, trying out new ice cream flavors and matcha spots, creating, exploring NYC, gallery hopping, and watching old and new episodes of Survivor.