Laszlo Zsolnai, Ph.D.

CO-HOST

Laszlo Zsolnai is Professor and Director of the Business Ethics Center at Corvinus University of Budapest. He is Associate Member of Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, and President of the SPES Institute in Leuven, Belgium. He was Visiting Professor or Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.), University of Richmond (Virginia), Concordia University (Montreal), University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Bocconi University Milan, University of St. Gallen, Venice International University, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. 

Laszlo Zsolnai’s research fields include business ethics, sustainability, and spirituality in the economy. He published 35 books and more than 300 papers. His latest books include “The Routledge International Handbook of Spirituality in Society and the Professions” (Routledge, 2019), „Responsible Research for Better Business” (Palgrave, 2020), „Global Perspectives on Indian Spirituality and Management” (Springer, 2022), „Humanities as a Resource and Inspiration for Humanizing Business” (Springer, 2023), and „Value Creation for a Sustainable World” (Palgrave, 2023).   

Academic website: https://laszlo-zsolnai.com/

Robert A. F. Thurman, Ph.D.

KEYNOTE

Robert Thurman held the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West, the Jey Tsong Khapa Chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, before retiring in June of 2019. Educated at Philips Exeter and Harvard, he then studied Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism, and Asian languages and histories for fifty years with many teachers, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama (C. U. Ph.D., hc, 1989). He has written substantial scholarly works, founding and editing a new series through Columbia University Press, Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences. He also writes popular books, lecturing all over the world in the “public intellectual” tradition, with special concern for ethics and human rights in general, and the fate of the endangered Tibetan culture and people in particular. His main academic interest is in the Indo-Tibetan philosophical, scientific, and psychological traditions and their history, with a view to their all-too-little-known relevance to critical contemporary currents of thought in philosophy, science and spirituality, especially concerning the undeniable role of mind in nature.

Email: tbt7@columbia.edu

David Lorimer, Ph.D. 

David Lorimer is a visionary polymath, poet and spiritual activist who is Global Ambassador and Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network, Editor of Paradigm Explorer and Chair of the Galileo Commission. His most recent books are A Quest for Wisdom and his collection of poems Better Light a Candle.

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Knut J. Ims, Ph.D.

Dr. Knut J. Ims is professor emeritus in business ethics at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) in Bergen, which is his Alma mater since 1972 (bachelor’s degree/1976 and HAE degree/1979). He obtained his PhD from the School of Economics and Legal Science, Gothenburg University, and has been active member of the business ethics faculty group of (CEMS) – Global Alliance for Management Education for two decades. He is Fellow of the European SPES Institute and has been visiting scholar at number of universities (USA, Argentina, Europe). He has been a member of the committee for research misconduct at the University of Bergen and member of the fair trade board of the municipality of Bergen. He is current member of the board of Center for Ethics and Economics at NHH (since 2001), and member of the committee for research misconduct at NHH, and board member of a local green NGO. From 1985 he has annually presented his research at international scientific conferences from Hawaii to Corvinus, Oxford, Cambridge, Hong Kong, Pharo in Bhutan, Tel Aviv, Bologna and more. He has published several books and book chapters as well as articles in a variety of international journals.

Knut Ims’s books include the following:

Business within Limits. Deep Ecology and Buddhist Ethics. 2006, Oxford and Bern, (coedited with Laszlo Zsolnai)

Heroes and Anti-heroes. European Literature and the Ethics of Leadership. 2010, Garant, (coedited with Rita Ghesquiere), Art, Spirituality and Economics. Liber Amicorum for Laszlo Zsolnai. 2018, Springer, (coedited with Luk Bouckaert and Peter Rona), Deep Ecology, Business Ethics and Personal responsibility. Selected Papers (1988-2020) Peter Lang, 2022.

Nazar Yasin, JD, MBA

Nazar is the co-founder and CEO of Sol, the world’s first spiritual wellness super-app. As a repeat entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist, he has long championed the idea of doing “good” while doing “well”, and has organized his career around the goal of pursuing endeavors that seek to make a positive impact in the world.

In addition to co-founding Sol, Nazar is the founder of Rise Capital, one of the world’s premier investment firms focused on investing in purpose-driven companies led by underrepresented founders from Emerging Markets. Earlier in his career, Nazar was the CEO of the social networking company Forticom (acquired by LSE: MAIL), and was an executive at Tiger Global and Goldman Sachs.

In recognition of his achievements, in 2017 Nazar was presented with the  Distinguished Entrepreneur Award by Northwestern University, an award whose previous recipients include J. B. Pritzker (Governor of Illinois and namesake of Northwestern’s law school), Chuck Templeton (Founder of OpenTable.com), and Randall Kaplan (Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies).

Nazar received his undergraduate engineering degree from Georgia Tech, holds a JD from the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Elisabeth Mistur

Elisabeth Mistur (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a member of Dr. Lisa Miller’s psychology and spirituality lab and a research coordinator for Awakened Awareness for Adolescents and Emerging Adults (AA-A), a spiritual-mind-body group wellness program designed to support spiritual individuation and mental health in young adults. She recently defended her dissertation, “Supporting Sexual and Gender Minority College Student Wellness: Investigating Differential Needs and Outcomes in a Spiritual-Mind-Body Intervention”, which explores the feasibility and helpfulness of AA-A for SGM students. She is currently coordinating a multisite study on AA-A delivered on university campuses across the U.S. and is completing her clinical internship at JCCA Foster Home Services, where she conducts trauma-informed psychotherapy and psychological assessments for youth in foster care. 

Varun Soni, Ph.D.

Dr. Varun Soni is the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California.

Dean Soni received his B.A. degree in Religion from Tufts University, where he also earned an Asian Studies minor and completed the Program in Peace and Justice Studies. He subsequently received his M.T.S. degree from Harvard Divinity School and his M.A. degree through the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He went on to receive his J.D. degree from University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where he also completed the Critical Race Studies Program and served as an editor for the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law. He earned his Ph.D. through the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, where his doctoral research focused on religion and popular culture. As an undergraduate student, Dean Soni spent a semester living in a Buddhist monastery in Bodh Gaya, India through Antioch University’s Buddhist Studies Program. As a graduate student, he spent months doing field research in South Asia through UCSB’s Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies. 

Dean is currently a University Fellow at USC Annenberg’s Center on Public Diplomacy and an Adjunct Professor at the USC School of Religion. He is the author of Natural Mystics: The Prophetic Lives of Bob Marley and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Figueroa Press, 2014) and his writings have appeared in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Crosscurrents, Jewish Journal, and Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He produced the critically acclaimed graphic novel Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary by Keshni Kashyap, which is currently being adapted as a feature length film. He also produced and hosted his own radio  

Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D.

Cassandra Vieten is Clinical Professor and Director of the Center for Mindfulness at the Centers for Integrative Health in the Department of Family Medicine at UC San Diego. She is also Director of Research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and Clinical Psychology Director at the Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative at UCSD. She is Senior Advisor of the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation where she served as Executive Director from 2019-2023, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she served as President from 2013-2019. Her research has focused on spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, the development of mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, and development of media technologies to inspire awe. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and completed her research training in behavioral genetics at UC San Francisco. She has authored three books, published numerous articles in scientific journals, and is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and workshop leader.

Lisa Miller, Ph.D.

CO-HOST

Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University, Teachers College and Founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program in spirituality and psychology. Dr. Miller is a foremost scientist on spirituality across the lifespan, with her work published in top research journals including JAMAPsychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, and the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Her innovative research has focused on quantifiable effects of spirituality in health, resilience and thriving, and an overall sacred and joyful life. Her clinical and consultation work focuses on spiritual awareness and spiritual growth, for individuals, families, groups and organizations. Dr. Miller is the author of The Spiritual Child; The New Science of Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving and The Awakened Brain; The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. She is the Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality and Co-Editor of the APA journal, Spirituality in Clinical Practice. She has been elected as Fellow by the American Psychological Association, as well as for the Virginia Sexton Mentoring Award of graduate students. A graduate of Yale, she received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania from Martin Seligman.

Laszlo Zsolnai, Ph.D.

CO-HOST

Laszlo Zsolnai is Professor and Director of the Business Ethics Center at Corvinus University of Budapest. He is Associate Member of Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, and President of the SPES Institute in Leuven, Belgium. He was Visiting Professor or Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.), University of Richmond (Virginia), Concordia University (Montreal), University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Bocconi University Milan, University of St. Gallen, Venice International University, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. 

Laszlo Zsolnai’s research fields include business ethics, sustainability, and spirituality in the economy. He published 35 books and more than 300 papers. His latest books include “The Routledge International Handbook of Spirituality in Society and the Professions” (Routledge, 2019), „Responsible Research for Better Business” (Palgrave, 2020), „Global Perspectives on Indian Spirituality and Management” (Springer, 2022), „Humanities as a Resource and Inspiration for Humanizing Business” (Springer, 2023), and „Value Creation for a Sustainable World” (Palgrave, 2023).   

Academic website: https://laszlo-zsolnai.com/

Steven Rockefeller, Ph.D.

KEYNOTE

Professor Emeritus of Religion at Middlebury College, where he served as Dean of the College. He received his master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and his Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion from Columbia University. He is the author of John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism) and the co-editor of two books of essays, The Christ and the Bodhisattva and Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment is a Religious Issue. One major focus in his books and essays is the interrelation of spirituality, democracy, and ecology.

Professor Rockefeller was centrally involved in the creation of the Earth Charter, an international declaration of global interdependence with fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful world. Active in the field of philanthropy, for three decades, he served as a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an international foundation, and chaired the Fund’s board from 1998 to 2006. He is the founding president of the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor, Maine, and of the Otter Creek Child Care Center in Middlebury Vermont. Since 2017, he has served as co-chair of the board of trustees for the Collaborative for Spirituality in Education, and he is the author of a new book, Spiritual Democracy and Our Schools.

David Lorimer, Ph.D.

David Lorimer is a visionary polymath, poet and spiritual activist who is Global Ambassador and Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network, Editor of Paradigm Explorer and Chair of the Galileo Commission. His most recent books are A Quest for Wisdom and his collection of poems Better Light a Candle.

Read More

Knut J. Ims, Ph.D.

Dr. Knut J. Ims is professor emeritus in business ethics at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) in Bergen, which is his Alma mater since 1972 (bachelor’s degree/1976 and HAE degree/1979). He obtained his PhD from the School of Economics and Legal Science, Gothenburg University, and has been active member of the business ethics faculty group of (CEMS) – Global Alliance for Management Education for two decades. He is Fellow of the European SPES Institute and has been visiting scholar at number of universities (USA, Argentina, Europe). He has been a member of the committee for research misconduct at the University of Bergen and member of the fair trade board of the municipality of Bergen. He is current member of the board of Center for Ethics and Economics at NHH (since 2001), and member of the committee for research misconduct at NHH, and board member of a local green NGO. From 1985 he has annually presented his research at international scientific conferences from Hawaii to Corvinus, Oxford, Cambridge, Hong Kong, Pharo in Bhutan, Tel Aviv, Bologna and more. He has published several books and book chapters as well as articles in a variety of international journals.

Knut Ims’s books include the following:

Business within Limits. Deep Ecology and Buddhist Ethics. 2006, Oxford and Bern, (coedited with Laszlo Zsolnai)

Heroes and Anti-heroes. European Literature and the Ethics of Leadership. 2010, Garant, (coedited with Rita Ghesquiere), Art, Spirituality and Economics. Liber Amicorum for Laszlo Zsolnai. 2018, Springer, (coedited with Luk Bouckaert and Peter Rona), Deep Ecology, Business Ethics and Personal responsibility. Selected Papers (1988-2020) Peter Lang, 2022.

Alexander Moreira-Almeida, Ph.D.

Alexander Moreira-Almeida, MD, PhD is Professor of Psychiatry at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF) School of Medicine and Founder and Director of the Research Center in Spirituality and Health, Brazil. Chair of the Section on Spirituality of the Latin American Psychiatric Association (APAL). Founding chair of the section on spirituality of the Brazilian Psychiatric Association (2014-21). Former chair of the Sections on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) (2014-21) when coordinated the WPA Position Statement on Spirituality and Religion in Psychiatry. Author of more than 190 papers published in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. Editor of the book “Spirituality and Mental Health Across Cultures” (Oxford Univ Press, 2021) and coauthor of “Science of Life After Death” (Springer, 2022). His main research interests involve the exploration of the association between religiosity and health as well as empirical studies of spiritual experiences, especially their implication for the mind-brain problem, as well as the methodology, history and epistemology of this research field.

Suza C. Scalora, Ph.D.

Dr. Suza C. Scalora is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. She holds a concurrent appointment as an Assistant Attending Psychologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. She teaches the Spiritual Wellness course as an adjunct assistant professor at the Spirituality Mind Body Institute (SMBI), Teachers College, and Columbia University.   

Her research interests focus on developing and evaluating Spiritual Mind-Body (SMB) wellness interventions and emerging adult mental health and wellness. Dr. Scalora co-developed an integrative SMB wellness intervention, Awakened Awareness for Adolescents and Emerging Adults, delivered it at Columbia University and Barnard College, and co-led a three-year research study evaluating the intervention. Currently, she provides training and supervision for the Awakened Awareness intervention multisite study to college facilitators at universities throughout the United States.

Dr. Scalora received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a licensed clinical psychologist in New York State. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Scalora earned a master’s degree in psychology in education from Teachers College, Columbia University, with a concentration in Spirit-Mind-Body psychology, and worked as the Director of Research at the Integrative Spiritual Wellness Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Dr. Scalora provides treatment to adults through Weill Cornell Medicine’s Physicians Organization and young adult graduate and medical students through the WCM Graduate Student Mental Health Program. Her theoretical orientation is integrative, using mindfulness, Spirit-Mind-Body interventions, and evidence-based treatment modalities, including dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT).  

Elisabeth Mistur

Elisabeth Mistur (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a member of Dr. Lisa Miller’s psychology and spirituality lab and a research coordinator for Awakened Awareness for Adolescents and Emerging Adults (AA-A), a spiritual-mind-body group wellness program designed to support spiritual individuation and mental health in young adults. She recently defended her dissertation, “Supporting Sexual and Gender Minority College Student Wellness: Investigating Differential Needs and Outcomes in a Spiritual-Mind-Body Intervention”, which explores the feasibility and helpfulness of AA-A for SGM students. She is currently coordinating a multisite study on AA-A delivered on university campuses across the U.S. and is completing her clinical internship at JCCA Foster Home Services, where she conducts trauma-informed psychotherapy and psychological assessments for youth in foster care. 

Hitendra Wadhwa, Ph.D.

Hitendra Wadhwa is the author “Inner Mastery, Outer Impact: How Your Five Core Energies Hold the Key to Success”. He has been a lifelong student of the world’s mystic traditions, and his mission is to discover, codify and teach the laws of success in life and leadership. As Professor at Columbia Business School, he has won the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence for his teaching on Personal Leadership & Success. He is the founder of the Mentora Institute, dedicated to offering a scientific path to pursuing material and spiritual success in life and leadership, accelerating performance at work, and building exemplary leaders and cultures. Previously, Dr. Wadhwa worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey and Company, and was the founder and CEO of a Silicon Valley startup, Paramark. He received an MBA and PhD in Management Science from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and BA (with Honors in Mathematics) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

Varun Soni, Ph.D.

Dr. Varun Soni is the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California.

Dean Soni received his B.A. degree in Religion from Tufts University, where he also earned an Asian Studies minor and completed the Program in Peace and Justice Studies. He subsequently received his M.T.S. degree from Harvard Divinity School and his M.A. degree through the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He went on to receive his J.D. degree from University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where he also completed the Critical Race Studies Program and served as an editor for the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law. He earned his Ph.D. through the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, where his doctoral research focused on religion and popular culture. As an undergraduate student, Dean Soni spent a semester living in a Buddhist monastery in Bodh Gaya, India through Antioch University’s Buddhist Studies Program. As a graduate student, he spent months doing field research in South Asia through UCSB’s Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies.

Madhumita Chatterji, Ph.D.

Dr. Madhumita Chatterji is the Director of ABBS School of Management (Acharya Bangalore B School.) 

Dr.Chatterji specialises in Organisational Behaviour & Human Resource Management. She has worked extensively in the areas of Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Governance & Business Ethics. Her work also covers Cross Cultural Management Processes, Business History and Indian Ethos & Culture.

She has earned MA, MBA with University rank and gold medal and completed her Ph.D from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. She has completed a program in History, Politics and Society from University of Oxford, U.K. She was awarded a scholarship to attend a course on Participant Based Learning at Harvard Business School, USA. Books authored by her are: “The Ksatriyas in Ancient India,” “Corporate Social Responsibility,” “Ethical Leadership – Indian and European Spiritual Approaches” and “New Frontiers in Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Peace Science” She is the co-founder of the Mahatma Gandhi International Research Centre for Conflict Prevention and Management, Member, Advisory Board of European SPES Institute, Founding Board member of South Asian Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (SAADRI). 

She is associated with various academic and non-academic bodies. She is Involved in research and teaching as senior faculty in various Management Institutes and conducts training for senior executives in Corporates on Team building, Emotional Intelligence, Interpersonal Skills, Counselling Skills, Cross Cultural Understanding and other soft skills.

Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D.

Cassandra Vieten is Clinical Professor and Director of the Center for Mindfulness at the Centers for Integrative Health in the Department of Family Medicine at UC San Diego. She is also Director of Research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and Clinical Psychology Director at the Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative at UCSD. She is Senior Advisor of the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation where she served as Executive Director from 2019-2023, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she served as President from 2013-2019. Her research has focused on spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, the development of mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, and development of media technologies to inspire awe. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and completed her research training in behavioral genetics at UC San Francisco. She has authored three books, published numerous articles in scientific journals, and is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and workshop leader.

Rev. Laura S. Tuach

Laura holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. She is currently the Assistant Dean of Ministry Studies and Field Education and an Instructor on Ministry at Harvard Divinity School. Her teaching is at the intersection of spiritual development, leadership, purpose, and meaning making.  She teaches, coaches, and advises students and professionals of diverse faiths, backgrounds, and vocational trajectories. She is a guest faculty member and coach for global leaders participating in Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, a social impact fellowship. Additionally, she is on the faculty of the Spiritual Lives of Leaders, a uniquely interdisciplinary course which is cross listed at Harvard Business School and Harvard Divinity School. In addition to HBS and HDS, this course has registrants from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Law School, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Laura is also a founding faculty member of Making Change, the executive education program at HDS. She is a core member of the leadership team of the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion at Harvard. 

Laura is an ordained United Church of Christ minister and an affiliate minister of Harvard University’s Memorial Church.  Prior to working at Harvard, she was the Associate Director of a faith-based non-profit committed to reducing recidivism through education for incarcerated women and men. She has served in several congregations in Massachusetts. Laura worked in the private sector prior to receiving her Master of Divinity.  She is a spiritual guide and coach in private practice and specializes in meaning making, authentic leadership, values articulation, and alignment of one’s inner purpose with daily reality. She is trained in Family Constellations facilitation and energy medicine. She resides in Cambridge with her husband and eleven year old twins.

Ari Kohn

Ari Kohn is a sophomore at Harvard College, concentrating in Political Economy. She is the student-Chair and founder of WISE at Harvard, which seeks to foster a more harmonious community and world by cultivating a sense of Wonder, Intention, Spirituality and Equanimity across campus. WISE accompanies students on their personal journeys for purpose and meaning, and helps equip them with tools to cultivate the multiple forms of knowing and wisdom inside us all. Ari is currently working with faculty across the Harvard graduate schools and college to design a course on the “Spiritual Lives of Leaders.” She is an undergraduate fellow in the Safra Center of Ethics, where she investigates how the ethical character of countries are developed and sustained. Ari is the student fellow of Intellectual Vitality initiatives, helping to foster civil discourse and academic freedom among undergraduates. 

Gedela Saikiran

PGDM Student | ABBS School of Management

I am a dynamic and results-driven student with four years of diverse work experience across marketing, sales, and technical support in various organizations. My journey has equipped me with a deep understanding of business processes and customer interactions.

As a PGDM student at ABBS School of Management, I combine my practical industry insights with academic rigor. My interest lies in exploring the intersection of spirituality and management. I firmly believe that incorporating spiritual principles can enhance leadership, decision-making, and overall organizational well-being.

Máté Kovács

Máté Kovács is a student of Business and Management at the Corvinus University of Budapest, specializing in Sustainability Management, and previously graduated in Communication and Media Sciences at Corvinus. He is also working at the university as a sustainability project assistant since 1 March. In his work he supports the university’s platform on ethics, social responsibility and sustainability called ERS Hub and is also involved in the Corvinus Green project to improve the sustainability of the university infrastructure.

In his free time, he volunteers to run an online youth magazine in his home village of Lakitelek, Hungary, and organises community discussion evenings as part of a local action on sustainability and healthy lifestyle. A common element of the evenings is the inclusion of spirituality in different topics, with the aim of exploring the problems from a holistic perspective together with local people.

Shanthi Soans

Shanthi Soans is a first-year doctoral student in the SMBI. With a background in ecology and environmental education, she is passionate about exploring and enhancing the ways organisms develop through their relationships with one another. Shanthi sees both scientific inquiry and spirituality as the unending pursuit of truth, and she is thrilled to be a part of the CSE’s work. 

Tais Oliveira

PhD candidate in Psychology at Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF). Researcher at Research Center in Spirituality and Health (NUPES/UFJF). Member of University Network for Research in Spirituality, Federal University of Bahia (REUPE/UFBA). Currently on an international exchange with Niagara University and Hospice Palliative Care Buffalo, USA. Degree in Psychology from UFBA. Master’s in interdisciplinary studies at the University from UFBA. Specialist in Family Health from Bahiana School of Medicine and Public Health (EBMSP). Psychotherapist in Bioenergetic Analysis at Libertas Clínica-Escola, Research and Postgraduate Center and in Biosynthesis at the Biosynthesis Center of Bahia. Experience in Public Health, Higher Education, the private sector and the third sector. I am interested in the relationships between Psychology and models of holistic and comprehensive health care. Currently, I investigate the relationships between spirituality and health, especially spiritual experiences in dying process (End-of-Life Experiences) and their implications for the mind-brain relationship.