Our healthcare system is near breaking point. It needs healing. We envision health care professionals finding resilience in training compassion, mindfulness, and reducing burnout, depression, anger, and frustration. This resilience and new life will automatically be transmitted to patients. By 2030 we aim to transform medical education to incorporate curricula of self-compassion, compassion for others, mindfulness, and resilience as essential as anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology.
Barry Kerzin is a medical doctor, an Affiliate Prof. at the Univ. of Washington Tacoma, a Visiting Prof. at Central University of Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, India, a former Honorary Prof. at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and a former Assist. Prof. of Medicine at the Univ. of Washington. Barry is a fellow at the Mind and Life Institute and consults for the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig on compassion training.
For 30 years, he has been providing free medical care to the poor up to the highest lamas, including HH Dalai Lama. Barry has completed many meditation retreats, including a three-year retreat. His brain was studied at Princeton Univ. and the Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, as a long-term meditator. He was ordained as a Bikkshu (monk), and now combines his work as a monk and doctor, harmonizing the mind and body, lecturing around the world in Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, Mongolia, India, Korea, Europe, and North America.
For HVI, Barry works in juvenile prisons in Japan and is developing well-being curriculum. He teaches compassion to doctors at St. Luke's hospital in Tokyo, and other hospitals and medical schools in Japan, e.g. Kyoto University, and leads meditation retreats at Mt. Fuji. He has been training Google Japan employees in mindfulness, resilience, and compassion. He has delivered 2 TEDx talks. For AIMI, in June 2015, he presented a medical grand rounds lecture on compassion at Stanford Medical School, and Stanford CCARE - and in July lectured at Surgical Grand Rounds on the science behind meditation to the Ventura County Medicine Centre, as well as lectured at the Univ. of Washington. In Spring 2016, he lectured at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and U.K. medical schools. Barry was the keynote speaker for the White Coat Ceremony for new first year medical students at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, both in 2016 and again in 2018. In Fall 2016, he presented the plenary lecture to 800 Family Doctors at the Family Medicine Education Consortium in Pittsburgh, and in 2018 started training 16,000 nurses at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Compassion, Mindfulness, and Resilience. In 2018, he taught CME courses for UPMC doctors, and presented a Medical Grand Rounds at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Barry has written many chapters for books and done many interviews for radio and TV, including documentaries on PBS New Medicine 2005; PBS Ethics and Religion 2015; and PBS Newshour 2015. His books are: No Fear No Death: The Transformative Power of Compassion, and Nāgārjuna’s Wisdom: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Middle Way (in press). Available in Japanese are Tibetan Buddhist Prescription for Happiness, and Mind and Matter: Dialogue between Two Nobel Laureates.
My Near-Death Experience Inspired Me (Article on how a near-death experience inspired Dr. Kerzin to live a life of compassion).
Robyn Brentano has devoted her career as a nonprofit leader to promoting compassionate and sustainable solutions to issues in the fields of international development, refugee resettlement, education, human services, and cultural revitalization. Currently, she is the Vice President for Resource Development at The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT. Prior to joining The Center, she served as the Executive Director of the Garrison Institute, which supports the application of contemplative methods to foster individual, community, and systemic resilience in education, climate change, and trauma. As the Executive Director of the Tibet Fund, she worked intensively with the US State Department and the Tibetan government-in-exile to implement education, health, economic and community development programs across the 52 Tibetan settlements in India and Nepal. At Healing the Divide, a public charity founded by Richard Gere, she oversaw an arts revitalization program in Tibet, a health care project for destitute Tibetan monks and nuns in India, and an initiative to support Israeli and Palestinian grassroots peace organizations. As VP for Development at the New York Association for New Americans, the nation’s largest refugee resettlement organization in the 1990s, she led fundraising for the agency’s education, employment, microenterprise, legal services, citizenship, domestic violence, and substance abuse programs.
William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, and Founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has been at Wisconsin since 1984. He has published more than 360 articles, numerous chapters and reviews and edited 14 books. He is the author (with Sharon Begley) of “The Emotional Life of Your Brain” published by Penguin in 2012. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research including the William James Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society. He was the year 2000 recipient of the most distinguished award for science given by the American Psychological Association – the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. He was the Founding Co-Editor of the new American Psychological Association journal EMOTION. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2006. In 2011, he was given the Paul D. MacLean Award for Outstanding Neuroscience Research in Psychosomatic Medicine. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences from 2011-2017 and member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Mental Health for 2014-2016. His 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.
Pico Iyer is the author of twelve books, on subjects as diverse as the Cuban Revolution, globalism, Islamic mysticism and His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. In both 2013 and 2014 he delivered talks for TED–one on movement, one on stillness–and each has received more than two million views so far. Educated at Eton, Oxford and Harvard, he has been an essayist for Time since 1986, and for The New York Times for almost as long, and his pieces regularly appear also in The New York Review of Books, Harper’s and the Financial Times.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. is a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher. He is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he was founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (1995), and founder (in 1979) and former director of its world-renown Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic. He is the author of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness (Dell, 1990, 2005, 2013), Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (Hyperion, 1994, 2005), and many others. His books are published in over 40 languages. Dr. Kabat-Zinn received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from MIT in 1971. Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s work has contributed to a growing movement of mindfulness into mainstream institutions such as medicine, psychology, health care, neuroscience, schools, business, prisons, and professional sports. Hospitals and medical centers around the world now offer clinical programs based on training in mindfulness and MBSR. Dr. Kabat-Zinn has received numerous awards over the span of his career, and is a former board member of the Mind and Life Institute.
Abraham Verghese is Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and a fierce advocate for bedside medicine and physical diagnosis in an era of increasingly sophisticated medical technology, where computer-based medical information often supersedes the patient’s story. He was instrumental in establishing the Stanford 25, which emphasizes bedside medicine and identifies 25 physical diagnosis skills student must master prior to the end of their fourth year of training. Dr. Verghese coined the term ‘iPatient’ for the electronic records that often receive more attention than the patient in the bed. Dr. Verghese is a compelling voice for healthcare professionals and non-medical audiences alike. His first novel, Cutting for Stone, was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. His first book, a memoir, My Own Country, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; his second, also a memoir, The Tennis Partner, was a national bestseller. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and in the medical literature. He is working on his second novel, The Maramon Convention. Dr. Verghese studied medicine at the University of Madras and completed his Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine. He is a Master of the American College of Physicians and was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2011. In 2014, he was awarded the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities.
Wayne Tormala is Chief of the Arizona Department of Health Services – Bureau of Tobacco & Chronic Disease. Dedicating his entire career to human service, Wayne Tormala has provided leadership in both the public and private sectors at the local, state, national and global levels. Wayne has developed successful programs across a wide range of issues, including poverty, world hunger, mental health, HIV/AIDS, environmental conservation, economic development, social justice, and public health. In his current duties as Bureau Chief at the Arizona Department of Health Services, Wayne provides leadership across a range of population health arenas, including tobacco control, chronic disease (heart, cancer, lung, stroke, diabetes, HIV prevention), healthy aging (falls prevention, Alzheimer’s Disease), men’s health, worksite wellness, chronic pain, and health disparities. Wayne has developed several “best practices” in economic development and public health for high-risk, disparate populations, and has performed extensive public-speaking and media work throughout his career in local, state, and national venues. Wayne finds balance with daily meditation, relaxing with family and friends, playing guitar, gardening, and enjoying the nearby deserts and mountains of Arizona.