Staff & Instructors
INSTRUCTORS
Anahata Labaw , Leilani Nisperos, Vinny Ferraro, Will Kabat-Zinn, Jon Oda, Jonathan Weinstock, Sam Himelstein, Amutabi Haines, Amani Carey-Simms, Kekoa Won, Miakoda Taylor, Ripa Ajmera, Matt Allen (not all pictured above)
STAFF
Chris McKenna – Executive Director: Chris has spent over a decade working with diverse communities suffering from high incidents of trauma and violence. From 2006-2009, he was Outreach Director of the Center for Justice and Accountability, an NGO launched out of Amnesty International that provides legal and psychosocial services to victims of torture, genocide and war crimes from over 20 countries. He was also the Executive Director of Tibet Justice Center, an NGO which does international advocacy on Tibetan human rights, religious freedom and environmental issues for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, and a campaigner on WITNESS’s “Books Not Bars” initiative, working with grassroots prison reform groups to challenge youth incarceration policies in the U.S. He has a fifteen-year history with mindfulness meditation and has taught mindfulness practices to refugees with post-traumatic stress disorder and other severe mental health conditions. He is on the Advisory Council of “Honoring the Path of the Warrior” – a project of the San Francisco Zen Center which teaches mindfulness and somatic awareness techniques to U.S. soldiers returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chris also serves on the Executive Committee of the Tibetan Association of Northern California, focusing on the effort to acquire a community center for Tibetan refugees living in the Bay Area. He has a degree in Religion and Asian Studies from Columbia University and has had the good fortune to study with several excellent teachers in the Buddhist and Daoist traditions.
Vinny Ferraro – Teacher Training Director: Vinny is a long-time mindfulness meditation practitioner, meditation instructor, and a nationally recognized leader in designing and implementing interventions for at-risk, gang-involved and incarcerated youth. The child of incarcerated parents, Vinny was in the probation system by the age of 10 and went on to spend the majority of his teenage life hustling and living on the streets. In 1987, after recovering from drug addiction, he began leading youth groups in drug rehabilitation centers, juvenile halls, schools and half-way houses through the Hospitals and Institutions Program of Narcotics Anonymous. Vinny continued this work for nearly a decade before transitioning to a more intensive focus on mindfulness-based rehabilitation and emotional awareness work. In 2001, he began teaching for the Challenge Day organization, a nationally-recognized transformational change organization that helps adolescents overcome internalized and external oppression, cultivate emotional well-being, and create healthier communities. He eventually becoming Challenge Day’s Director of Training, leading workshops in four different countries to over 100,000 youth. In addition with is work with youth, Vinny has extensive experience training probation officers, teachers, and community leaders who work with at-risk youth how to utilize mindfulness-based practices to deal with their own stress, anxiety, and secondary trauma. Vinny leads meditation retreats for adults nation-wide and is a graduate of Spirit Rock Mediation Center’s Community Dharma Leader’s Program. He has received national media coverage for his work with at-risk youth; he is the subject of the MTV series If You Really Knew Me.
Sam Himelstein – Research Director: Sam – a formerly incarcerated youth – is an advanced candidate for a PhD in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA. His clinical focus is on working with at-risk and incarcerated youth in both individual and group psychotherapy settings. He is currently finishing his pre-doctoral licensing hours at a juvenile detention camp in San Mateo County where he facilitates awareness-based drug and alcohol groups and sees youth for individual psychotherapy. Sam has worked for MBA for three years as a meditation instructor in Alameda, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties. Prior to his involvement with MBA, Sam worked in diverse settings including wilderness therapy programs for at-risk youth, suicide prevention centers, and prior psychotherapy internships with post-incarcerated adult drug abusers, homeless populations, and war veterans. His most recent accomplishment is his PhD dissertation, which investigated MBA’s current curriculum and is entitled, “A Mixed Methods Study of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention on Incarcerated Youth.” Visit Sam’s personal website here.
Andrea Davis – Operations & Program Manager: Andrea was previously the Office Manager at Partners in School Innovation, a San Francisco-based education reform organization. She has extensive direct service experience with at-risk youth, serving both as the Outreach Team Supervisor at Girls Educational and Mentoring Services and the Arts & Wellness Coordinator at Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice in New York City. She has a Masters of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary and has a particular interest in adapting contemplative and healing arts programming to the needs of contemporary youth of color.
