Meet The
Team
Mindful Directory Team
Barry Boyce
Founding Editor at Mindful.org
A longtime professional writer, editor, and trainer specializing in applications of mindfulness and awareness to everyday life, Barry is editor of The Mindfulness Revolution and served as developmental editor for Congressman Tim Ryan’s books, A Mindful Nation and The Real Food Revolution. From 2008 to 2012, he wrote for the “Mindful Society” department of Shambhala Sun magazine. He is also coauthor of The Rules of Victory, an extended commentary on Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
Sharon Hadley
Founding Director
Sharon is the Founding Director of Mindful Directory and the CEO of the University of Oxford Mindfulness Centre. Sharon has supported many organisations and initiatives over 10 years in the mindfulness field; she worked with the British Association of Mindfulness Based Approaches to build the UK Teachers Listing, she was the Business Manager in Bangor University Centre for Mindfulness and the Business Director with the UK Mindfulness Network. Sharon supported the build and now works with Zindel to manage ACCESS MBCT. From holding various roles in the field, Sharon discovered the need to develop collaboration between organisations to communicate mindfulness events and address the difficulty the public have to source mindfulness teachers and understand their training. Sharon established Mindful Directory to support the mindfulness community to share key information.
Bryan Welch
Director
Bryan Welch is the CEO of Mindful.org. He is a veteran media executive, writer and entrepreneur with specific expertise in businesses that improve the world. Bryan has served on the boards of the Magazine Publishers Association, the Social Venture Network and several other nonprofits. He also has served on corporate boards of directors and advisory boards of companies involved in natural foods, ecommerce and the media. He was honored with the B Corporations’ 2014 Hal Taussig lifetime-achievement award for “using business as a force for good.” He holds a master’s degree from Harvard University where he studied at the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School. Bryan’s award-winning book, Beautiful & Abundant: Building the World We Want, appeared in 2011. He and his wife, Carolyn, raise organic, grass-fed cattle, sheep and goats on their farm near Lawrence, Kansas.
Dawn Poupart
Directory Coordinator
Dawn’s main role is to oversee communication, responding to day-to-day queries and coordinating the processing of applications. Dawn has worked on various other mindfulness projects including supporting conferences, processing the supervision listing for the Mindfulness Network and more recently managing the operations for Eventslist prior to the transition to Mindful Directory. Dawn has a personal interest in mindfulness particularly mindfulness for children and families.
Amanda Hester
Director of Operations and Business Development at Mindful.org
Amanda recently joined Mindful.org as the director of operations and business development. She has an eclectic background, with graduate degrees in both political science and criminology. She has worked as a freelance editor, writer, and has over a decade of experience teaching both high school students and undergrads. She has worked for a variety of non-profits, typically in areas of security and conflict resolution, and is a second-generation Buddhist who has been practicing mindfulness and meditation since childhood.
Jo Edwards
Partner Coordinator
Jo’s main role is to manage the relationships with all our Partner Organizations. This includes supporting new organizations to join the Directory and working with existing Partners to incorporate teacher registrations into their training programmes. Jo joined the team having worked in the mindfulness field for some years, holding operational, financial and events management roles.
greyrabbit
Web Design & Build
We are supported by greyrabbit, a full service agency based in the heart of the UK.
They currently work with several Mindfulness organizations on a multitude of projects including web, digital, social media and marketing. They have designed and built the latest Mindful Directory website from the ground up, and also help manage the day-to-day running of the site.
Check out a full range of greyrabbit’s services on their website, here.
Guiding Colleagues
Below are the field leaders and intervention experts that have generously supported and guided this vision of a central directory, this support goes back to the earlier days when it was referred to as Eventslist. This team will continue to offer guidance on essential intervention developments as Mindful Directory grows and serves the field.
Amir H Imani
Advising on:
Retreats
Amir is founding director of Centre for Mindfulness at Atieh Hospital in Tehran, Iran, and co-founder of Centre for Mindfulness India. He is a counselling psychologist from University of Toronto, and a certified MBSR teacher from University of Massachusetts Medical School. Amir has been practicing meditation, teaching MBSR and leading silent retreats in different countries for the past two decades.
Bridgette O’Neill
Advising on:
Retreats
Bridgette is the Retreat Lead for the Mindfulness Network in the UK and is a member of a group of retreat leads reviewing Good Practice Guidance for retreat leads. She is also on the core training team for the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice at Bangor University, where she teaches on the Masters and continuing development programmes. Bridgette works for the Sussex Mindfulness Centre, (SMC) as a trainer and supervisor and teaches mindfulness-based approaches (MBAs) to NHS staff and clients. She is a clinical psychologist by professional training and is also a meditation instructor and teacher within the Shambhala Buddhist tradition and a Mindfulness-based Compassionate Living (MBCL) teacher.
Christina Feldman
Advising on:
Other Events
Christina Feldman is of the generation of dharma teachers that began teaching in the west in 1975 after spending some years in Asia studying and practice in both the Mahayana and Therevadan traditions. She is a co-founder of Gaia House and has served as a guiding teacher of Insight Meditation Society (IMS) since its early days. She is the founder of the Women’s retreat and the family retreat at IMS. More recently, she is a co-founder of Bodhi-College, which is dedicated to the study and practice of the early teachings of the Buddha. She teaches Buddhist psychology in several university settings in Europe, and she teaches both traditional retreats and study programs. She has been involved in the evolving exploration of mindfulness in contemporary settings. Her latest book is Boundless Heart: The Buddha’s Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity. In 2019, Guildford Press published her most recent book, Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Psychology, co-authored with Willem Kukyen.
Claire Kelly
Advising on:
Mindfulness in Schools Training Programme (MISP)
Claire is the Director of Curricula and Training at MiSP. Having worked in education 25 years, and at a senior leadership level for 18 of those years, Claire joined Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) in 2012. Claire is particularly interested in the role mindfulness can play in supporting staff in schools, and how this then feeds into students’ experiences of education. Claire is a trained teacher of mindfulness for adults (MBSR), and is a teacher trainer in MiSP’s curricula for young people and school staff. She has taught mindfulness in a range of settings, including traditional and special needs schools, PRUs, universities and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
Erik van den Brink and Frits Koster
Advising on:
Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living (MBCL)
Frits is a trainer in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). As a teacher he is connected to MBSR Training Institutes in the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland. Erik van den Brink is psychiatrist/psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher. Since its founding in 2007, he has been involved with the Center for Integrative Psychiatry, an innovative mental health clinic integrating complementary methods in mainstream psychiatric care. Together they have developed a follow-up programme for participants who have already followed a course in MBSR/MBCT. This programme is called Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living (MBCL) programme. Together they wrote Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living (Routledge, 2015).
Heather Regan-Addis
Advising on:
Mindfulness-Based Living Course (MBLC)
In 2010 Heather co-founded the Mindfulness Association which is now one of the largest Mindfulness Training and Mindfulness Teacher Training organisations in the UK and of which she is currently the Managing Director. She teaches Mindfulness, Compassion and Insight courses and leads the team that developed and delivers the Mindfulness Teacher Training program to teach the 8 week Mindfulness Based Living Course (MBLC). She is a past convenor and member of the executive committee of the UK Network of Mindfulness Teacher Training organisations, which develops good practice guidelines for Mindfulness teachers and which runs the UK Listing of Mindfulness teachers.
Helen Ma
Advising on:
Teacher Training
Helen Ma is the Founding Teacher of the Hong Kong Center for Mindfulness. Helen is a Certified MBSR Teacher (Center for Mindfulness, University of Massachusetts) and an Associate Mindfulness Teacher at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, U.K. Her doctoral research was on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy(MBCT) and was supervised by Dr John Teasdale, one of the founders of MBCT. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Centre for Buddhist Studies, University of Hong Kong from 2002 to 2014. Since 1997, Helen has been conducting mindfulness training programmes for hospitals, government departments, corporations, schools and voluntary organizations.
Martine Batchelor
Advising on:
Other Events
Martine Batchelor lived in Korea as a Zen nun under the guidance e of Master Kusan for ten years. She is the author of Meditation for Life, The Path of Compassion, Women in Korean Zen and Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits. She is a member of the Gaia House Teacher Council. She teaches meditation retreats worldwide and lives in France. Her latest work is the The Spirit of the Buddha.
Nancy Bardacke
Advising on:
Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP)
Nancy is a midwife, mindfulness teacher, and the founding director of the Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) Program. A longtime meditation practitioner, she began her professional training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reductions (MBSR) with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, in 1994. After teaching MBSR for a number of years, Nancy began adapting the program to meet the needs of pregnant women and their partners, creating the MBCP program. Since 1998, Nancy has taught MBCP to more than 1500 expectant parents. Nancy currently leads the MBCP program at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center.
Rebecca Crane
Advising on:
Teacher Training
Rebecca is the Director of the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, School of Psychology, Bangor University where she has played a leading role in developing its training and research programme since it was founded in 2001. She is also the co-director of the Mindfulness Network CIC which brings together a network of highly trained mindfulness-based supervisors, teachers and retreat leaders to offer empirically supported mindfulness-based courses to all in society. Rebecca teaches and trains internationally in both Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR).
Sarah Bowden
Advising on:
Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP)
Sarah is a co-creator of MBRP and co-author of the Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention for Addictive Behaviors: A Clinician’s Guide. Sarah has facilitated MBRP groups in private and county treatment agencies, in criminal justice institutions, and at the VA Medical Center, and offers trainings to researchers and clinicians in the U.S., Europe, and Central America. She is particularly interested in the application of mindfulness-based work to dual-diagnosis and under-served populations. Sarah is a licensed clinical psychologist, an Assistant Professor at Pacific University, in Portland, OR, and an affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Steve Hickman
Advising on:
Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC)
Steve is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and an Associate Clinical Professor in the UC San Diego Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine & Public Health. As Executive Director of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion. Steve is the Founder and Executive Director of the UCSD Center for Mindfulness, a program of community building, clinical care, professional training and research. He has taught Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for 15 years and has trained teachers of MBSR, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and is an MSC Teacher Trainer as well. He leads MSC intensives and workshops around the world.
Taravajra
Advising on:
Beginners Courses
Taravajra has been teaching MBCT in Sussex since 2005 and is a trainer with Sussex Mindfulness Centre, he is also part of the core training team at Bangor Centre for Mindfulness, previously teaching on the Masters programme and teacher training retreats (TTR1), he offers supervision via the Mindfulness Network. Taravajra was instrumental in setting up the UK Listing for Mindfulness Teachers and is a convenor for the UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teacher Training Organisations. Taravajra gained a Masters degree in Mindfulness Based Approaches in 2010 at Bangor and holds a British Wheel of Yoga teaching diploma and is a Focusing practitioner.
Ted Meissner
Advising on:
Systems and Design
Ted Meissner joined the Center for Mindfulness in UMASS in December of 2015, transitioning from over twenty years in corporate Information Technology (IT). Throughout his professional career, Ted continued to grow his meditation practice of 25 years, and completed the training path to become an MBSR teacher. He began exploring the use of digital technology to share the practice with others who have a similar interest in both the scientific findings and in the personal transformative power of meditation. He has taught mindfulness within the corporate environment, delivering both in-person and virtual programs to hundreds of participants.
Vidyamala Birch
Advising on:
Breathworks
Vidyamala is the co-founder of Breathworks CIC, the internationally acclaimed mindfulness organisation based in the UK. Breathworks arose out of her experience using mindfulness to manage severe pain following spinal injuries in her teens. She has written a range of articles and books and recorded a number of audio CDs and downloads of guided meditations. Her main titles include LIVING WELL WITH PAIN & ILLNESS published in 2008 and MINDFULNESS FOR HEALTH, co-written with Dr Danny Penman, published in 2013. This is being released in the USA with the title YOU ARE NOT YOUR PAIN.
Zindel Segal
Advising on:
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
Zindel is the Distinguished Professor of Psychology in Mood Disorders at the University of Toronto. His research has helped to characterize psychological markers of relapse vulnerability to affective disorder. Among the books he has authored are Interpersonal Process in Cognitive Therapy, Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression, and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A new approach for preventing relapse. Awarded the Douglas Utting Prize for significant contributions to the understanding and treatment of depression and the Hope Award by the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario, he continues to advocate for the relevance of mindfulness-based clinical care in psychiatry and mental health.