Kaira Jewel Lingo is a senior Dharma teacher in the Plum Village Zen lineage and also teaches Vipassana in the Insight tradition. She is a member of the Plum Village North American Dharma Teachers’ Council of Elders and has been practicing mindfulness since 1997. Her work continues the Engaged Buddhism developed by Thich Nhat Hanh, shaped by her parents’ lives of service and her father’s work with Martin Luther King Jr. After 15 years as an ordained nun in Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastic community, Kaira Jewel now teaches internationally, offering spiritual mentoring as well as meditation courses, retreats, and training. Her work integrates mindfulness with creative expression, social and racial justice, and care for the Earth, inviting deep presence, relational inquiry, and embodied wisdom as foundations for personal transformation and collective liberation. She is the author of We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption and co-author of Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy, and Liberation. More information about her teachings and events can be found at www.kairajewel.com

Rev. Adam Bucko is a co-founder and Director of the Center for Spiritual Imagination and is an Episcopal priest serving at the Cathedral of the Incarnation. Adam has been a committed voice in the movement for the renewal of Christian Contemplative Spirituality and the growing New Monastic movement. He has taught engaged contemplative spirituality in Europe and the US and co-authored two books: Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation and The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living. His latest book, published in 2022, is Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation. Committed to an integration of contemplation and just practice, he co-founded an award winning non-profit, the Reciprocity Foundation, where he spent 15 years working with homeless youth living on the streets of New York City, providing spiritual care, developing programs to end youth homelessness and articulating a vision for spiritual mentoring in a post-religious world.