PLANNING COMMITTEE
Fleet Maull, Co-Director
Fleet is a leading teacher of mindfulness to prisoners, correctional officers and other criminal justice professionals, and creator of the Path of Freedom mindfulness curriculum for prisoners. He leads retreats and training programs throughout the U.S. and internationally.
Dan Carlin, Associate Director
Dan is a California-based attorney who has been working to bring mindfulness practices and principles into the legal profession since law school. He was previously Associate Director of the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law.
Angela Harris
Professor, UC Davis School of Law and an expert on criminal law and critical race theory. She is the co-author of “From ‘The Art of War’ to ‘Being Peace:’ Mindfulness and Community Lawyering in a Neoliberal Age.”
Charlie Halpern, Co-Director
Charlie is a long-time social entrepreneur and innovator in legal education. He founded the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law in 2011 and for more than 20 years has led workshops and retreats for law students and law professionals, in the U.S. and abroad.
Rhonda Magee
Professor at University of San Francisco Law School and a leading scholar and thinker in the integration of mindfulness into legal education and dialogues around race, class, gender, power, and privilege.
Jonathan Simon
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Society, UC Berkeley School of Law. Simon is a widely-respected author and researcher on criminal justice reform and mass incarceration.
CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS
Sujatha Baliga
Director of the Restorative Justice Program at Impact Justice (Oakland, CA). In 2013 her restorative justice work was featured in a cover story in the New York Times Magazine.
Preeta Bansal
Co-Founder and President, SocialEmergence.org; Lecturer, MIT Media Lab; Member, President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Previously: Solicitor General of New York State; general counsel and senior policy advisor to federal Office of Management and Budget (White House); partner and practice chair, Skadden Arps; and Chair, US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Robert Barton
Inspector General of California, which oversees the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Barton also serves as Chairman of the California Rehabilitation Oversight Board (C-ROB), which reports to the state legislature on the progress made by the CDCR in providing effective rehabilitative programs to California’s inmates and parolees.
Brad Bogue
President of Justice Systems Assessment and Training (JSAT), a leading provider to criminal justice institutions of training and implementation services for evidence-based practices.
Mark Bolton
Director, Louisville Metro Department of Corrections. Bolton has been involved in Mayor Greg Fischer’s efforts to integrate compassion and mindfulness into the city of Louisville’s services and administration, including its criminal justice operations.
Leslie Booker
Founder and Director of the Urban Sangha Project; Senior Teacher and Director of Teacher Trainings for the Lineage Project. Leslie teaches meditation and yoga to incarcerated youth. She also facilitated a mindfulness-based intervention with adolescents on Riker’s Island for two years through New York University, and has taught with the Prison Yoga Project in Northern California.
Fania Davis
Executive Director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (R-JOY). Prior to her work in restorative justice, Davis was a civil rights trial lawyer for 27 years. She has taught Restorative Justice at San Francisco’s New College Law School and Indigenous Peacemaking at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.
Richard Goerling
Lieutenant, Hillsboro, Oregon Police Department and co-creator of an 8-week mindfulness-based resiliency training (MBRT) program for police officers, now serving as a model for other police forces looking to integrate mindfulness training.
Ron Greenberg
Judge, California Superior Court (Ret.). Introduced the use of drug courts in Alameda County, and successfully integrated meditation practice into his court room. Greenberg is currently a mediator and teaches mindfulness workshops for judges throughout North America.
Chris Innes
Former Chief of Research and Information Services - National Institute of Corrections (Washington DC), and author of Healing Corrections: The Future of Imprisonment.
Beverly Kingston
Executive Director, Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at University of Colorado, Boulder. Kingston is a leading writer on issues of violence prevention and community rehabilitation.
Jeni Lyon
Filmmaker and restorative justice activist. Jeni's interest in criminal justice reform arose from her personal experience of miscarried justice and as a surviving victim of family violence. Jeni has served as a citizen lobbyist and volunteered for numerous organizations including Insight-Out, and the Texas Inmates Families Association. She is currently working on a feature documentary called Restoring Justice.
Robin Fisher, Associate Conference Reporter
Fisher is a former corporate attorney who participated in the three Santa Clara County mindfulness workshops, and has been involved in the mindfulness in law movement since 2012.
Fariborz Pakseresht
Director, Oregon Youth Authority. OYA operates 10 youth correctional facilities across the state charged with protecting the public by reducing crime, holding youth offenders accountable, and providing opportunities for reformation in safe environments.
Jared Seide
Director, Center for Council. Center for Council has expanded its Council-based programming to 14 prisons and 26 social justice orgs in California, is piloting a community-reconciliation program in LA Youth Court and is collaborating with Center for Mindfulness in Corrections on a wellness/resiliency skills program for correctional officers.
Ron Tyler
Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic, Stanford Law School. Tyler is a former federal public defender and integrates mindfulness training into his law school clinic. He has worked closely with Charlie Halpern and Ron Greenberg in piloting mindfulness workshops for attorneys and judges in Northern California.
Jacques Verduin
Executive Director of Insight Out. Pioneer of the mindfulness-based Guiding Rage Into Power (GRIP) program, first offered at San Quentin State Prison and now expanding to other facilities in California and internationally.
Joel Villaseca, Conference Reporter
Joel is an attorney in the United Nations Development Programme and teacher-in-training at the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute.