Kaisa Puhakka, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at CIIS and formerly was core faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She teaches psychotherapy, Buddhist thought and meditation, and transformation of consciousness. She is a former editor of The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.

Kaisa holds M.A. degrees in philosophy and psychology, a Ph.D. in experimental psychology form the University of Toledo, and a postdoctoral diploma in clinical psychology from Adelphi University. She has published a book and some thirty articles in the fields of comparative philosophy, phenomenology, and psychotherapy. She is coeditor (with Tobin Hart and Peter Nelson) of Transpersonal Knowing: Exploring the Horizon of Consciousness (2000). For more than thirty years, she has been a student of a variety of Buddhist practices, including monastic Rinzai Zen.