Speakers Profiles

Kimberly Schonert-Reichl

Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl is the Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) in the School of Population and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Kim is an Applied Developmental Psychologist and a Professor in the Human Development, Learning, and Culture area in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education at UBC.

For more than 20 years, Kim’s research has focused on the social and emotional learning (SEL) and development of children and adolescents with a particular emphasis on identifying the processes and mechanisms that foster children’s positive human qualities such as empathy, altruism and resiliency.

Rick Hanson

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author. His books are available in 26 languages and include Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture. He edits the Wise Brain Bulletin and has numerous audio programs. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he’s been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities, and taught in meditation centers worldwide. His work has been featured on the BBC, CBS, and NPR, and he offers the free Just One Thing newsletter with over 120,000 subscribers, plus the online Foundations of Well-Being program in positive neuroplasticity that anyone with financial need can do for free.
 

Patricia Jennings

Dr. Jennings is an Associate Professor of Education at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. She is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of social and emotional learning and mindfulness in education with a specific emphasis on teacher stress and how it impacts the social and emotional context of the classroom. Dr. Jennings led the team that developed CARE for Teachers, a mindfulness-based professional development program shown to significantly improve teacher well-being, emotional supportiveness and sensitivity and classroom productivity in the largest randomized controlled trial of a mindfulness-based intervention designed specifically to address teacher occupational stress. Dr. Jennings is leading the development of the Compassionate Schools Project curriculum, an integrated health education program designed to align with state and national health and physical education standards. She is Co-Principal Investigator on a large randomized controlled trial being conducted in Louisville, KY to evaluate the curriculum’s efficacy. Earlier in her career, Dr. Jennings spent over 22 years as a Montessori teacher, school director and teacher educator. She is the author of Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom part of the Norton Series on the Social Neuroscience of Education.
 

Chastity Davis

Chastity Davis is a mixed heritage woman of First Nations and European descent. She is a proud member of the Tla’amin Nation, located in Powell River just off the beautiful Sunshine Coast of BC.  Chastity strives to keep her sacred First Nations culture, traditions, and values incorporated into her modern day life. She feels it is her life purpose to facilitate the building of bridges between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and has dedicated her professional and personal life to do so. Chastity is sole proprietor to her own consulting business, Chastity Davis Consulting and has been a successful entrepreneur for 6+ years.  She is the Chair of the Ministers Advisory Council on Aboriginal Women and past director for the Minerva Foundation.  Chastity co-founded the Professional Aboriginal Women’s Network and is currently serving as Co-Chair for this important network that creates a shared space for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women to support each other in their respective careers. 

Chastity will be completing her MA in International and Intercultural Communications in Early 2018, has a BA in Professional Communications and a Diploma in Marketing Management and Professional Sales.  Chastity recently received two awards for her business, Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Outstanding Business Achievement (BC Aboriginal Business Awards) and 40 Under 40, Business in Vancouver.  Chastity has spoken at several international, national, and local events on the importance of building bridges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.  She dedicates her work to her 2 nephews, niece, and 10 year-old brother, as they are the future generations.

Daniel Siegel

Dr. Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute which focuses on the development of mindsight, which teaches insight, empathy, and integration in individuals, families and communities. Dr. Siegel has published extensively for both the professional and lay audiences. His four New York Times bestsellers are: Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human, Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D: The Whole-Brain Child, No-Drama Discipline, and the upcoming The Yes Brain (2018). His other books include: The Developing Mind (2nd Ed.), Mindsight, The Mindful Brain, and The Mindful Therapist. Dr. Siegel also serves as the Founding Editor for the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology which contains over fifty textbooks.  

Linda Lantieri

Linda Lantieri, MA has been in the field of education for over 45 years in a variety of capacities: classroom teacher, assistant principal, director of a middle school in East Harlem, and faculty member at Hunter College in New York City. She is a Fulbright Scholar and internationally known speaker in the areas of Social and Emotional Learning Contemplative Teaching and Learning and Mindfulness in Education. Linda is one of the co-founders and presently a Senior Program Advisor for the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). She is also core faculty of the Spirituality Mind Body Intensive M.A. Degree Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. For the last 15 years, she served as the Founding Director of The Inner Resilience Program whose mission is to cultivate the inner lives of students, teachers and schools by integrating social and emotional learning with contemplative practice.

Linda is the author of numerous articles and book chapters and coauthor of Waging Peace in Our Schools (Beacon Press, 1996) editor of Schools with Spirit: Nurturing the Inner Lives of Children and Teachers (Beacon Press, 2001), and author of Building Emotional Intelligence: Practices to Cultivate Inner Resilience in Children (Sounds True, 2008, 2014).

Maria LeRose

Maria LeRose is a long-time advisor to The Dalai Lama Center and an award-winning television producer and interviewer who has moderated panels featuring the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Sir Ken Robinson and other luminaries.  LeRose is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC and, before embarking on a career in journalism, she coordinated the first Child Abuse Prevention Program in British Columbia.