Archives: Authors

Ayya Suddhama

Ven. Ayya Suddhama is the first American woman ordained in Sri Lanka and abbess of Charlotte Buddhist Vihara in North Carolina.

Jessica Pimentel

Jessica Pimentel is an actor and musician best known for her role as Maria Ruiz in Orange Is the New Black.

Maia Zenyu Duerr is the author of Work That Matters: Create a Livelihood that Reflects Your Core Intention. A student in the Soto Zen lineage for many years, she has served as the executive director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the director of Upaya Zen Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program. Maia also has a master's degree in cultural anthropology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She draws on all these experiences to create tools for integrating mindfulness into the workplace. Maia lives in Northern New Mexico.

Lauren Casalino

Lauren Casalino is a licensed counselor and an associate professor at Naropa University.

Kira Newman

Kira M. Newman writes, edits, and produces content for all of the Greater Good Science Center’s websites, from the magazine to Greater Good in Action to the Science of Happiness MOOC, for which she’s served as course assistant for three semesters.

Hooria Jazaieri

Hooria Jazaieri, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She studies the role of social cognitive constructs (e.g., reputation, team chemistry) and positive affect (e.g., compassion, joy, gratitude) on individual and team performance. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Science Center, and Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.

Jeremy Adam Smith

Jeremy Adam Smith edits the Greater Good Science Center’s online magazine, Greater Good, and helps launch new products like Thnx4.org and Greater Good in Action. He is the author of The Daddy Shift, and also co-edited the collection Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood, as well as two Greater Good anthologies, Are We Born Racist?, and The Compassionate Instinct.

Jake Davis

Jake Davis studied and practiced under the guidance of Sayadaw U Pandita for nearly a decade, both as a layperson and as a monk. He currently teaches at Brown University and with Vipassana Hawaii.

Zachiah Murray

Zachiah Murray is the author of Mindfulness in the Garden: Zen Tools for Digging in the Dirt and a member of the Order of Interbeing in the lineage of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Christopher Stagg

Christopher Stagg was a Tibetan translator and interpreter for Nalandabodhi and the Nitartha Institute. He studied at Vajra Vidya Institute in Varanasi, India, and at Namo Buddha in Nepal. He translated The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa (Shambhala, 2017) under the direction of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. He died in October, 2018.

John Genjin Becvar

John Genjin Becvar is a novice priest with Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community in Cornwall, Vermont, and a graduate of the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program. He lives in Ottawa, Canada with his partner and three sons where he works for the Canadian Mental Health Association and in overdose prevention programs

Ivan Cash

Ivan Cash is an award-winning interactive artist, film director, and founder of Cash Studios. His conceptually-driven, genre-bending media projects spark meaningful conversation and impact culture, having been featured in The New York Times, CNN, TIME, The Guardian, Fast Company, Buzzfeed, The Atlantic, and received multiple Vimeo Staff Picks and Webby Honorees. He has been recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 artist, an Art Directors Club Young Gun, and a Print New Visual Artist. His work is in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and has exhibited internationally, from the Brooklyn Museum to the Australian Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences. You can find more about him on <a href="http://www.ivancash.com" rel="noopener">ivancash.com</a>