Alumni

If you have written a book, launched a new business, been featured in an article, have job leads to share or have made a career change, we would love for you to share your great news with our CIIS Alumni Community by sending us an Alumni Note.  Just send us 3 or 4 lines with a high-resolution photo at least 300 dpi to alumni@ciis.edu . 

Alumni Notes

Dr. Amy M Anderson, Ph.D., TSD ’21, is founding a new, international, multi-media, peer-reviewed, academic journal, Transformative Power of Art (TPoAJ). TPoAJ has also brought on TSD PhD student, Kelsay Myers, as editor. The mission of the journal is first and foremost, equity of voice. There is never any charge to publish, and the artist/author/creator always keeps publishing rights. Further, they believe it is imperative to normalize presentational ways-of-knowing as well-founded academic discourse used to deepen our discussions and understanding of any given theme. The new journal adds to the follow their FB page @TransformativePowerofArt, IG @TPoAJournal, and read more here.

Deepak Bansal, PCC ‘17, is the founder of Meaning Quotient Learning (MQ), an educational institute that is now EduQua certified. EduQua is an accreditation body recognized and supported by the Swiss Confederate Government; it's the first quality certification for Switzerland's public and private educational institutions.

Falilah Aisha Bilal, PDT ’15, will be presenting workshop entitled, "Grief Ritual ~ Holding it, together!" at the SoulPlay Festival on June 9-12, 2022, at the Mandala Spring Wellness Retreat Center in Cobb, California. SoulPlay Festival is a multi-day conscious gathering focused on heart-opening connection, personal expansion, and blissful dance.

In Bohemian Magazine, Dr. Fariba Bogzaran, Ph.D., EWP '94, shared her knowledge about the cognitive state of Lucid Dreaming. Fariba is an "artist, scientist and founder of the Dream Studies program at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley—to say the least about her—is aware of the stupendous dimension and potency of lucid dreams and has spent the better part of 30 years studying them."

Dr. Vince Brown, Ph.D., TSD ’20, recently participated in the global release of the educational climate documentary, Once You Know, winner of seven international film awards. Vince and other Work That Reconnects facilitators hosted 21 screenings in 8 countries, in 4 languages, to participants from 23 countries. This film explores an imperiled world, resource depletion, social disobedience, and how impacted communities are adapting to the crisis. Vince is an environmental specialist focusing on watershed health and multiple species habitat regeneration.

New Beginnings is pleased to announce the addition of Shana Burns, MFT, ICP ’05, as the agency’s new Clinical Director. Burns joins New Beginnings bringing a range of clinical, administrative, and management experience to the position, most recently serving as the Forensics Manager for the County of Santa Barbara’s Department of Behavioral Wellness. Prior to that, Burns served as a Regional Manager for the department, overseeing mental health outpatient clinics in northern Santa Barbara County. MORE

Dr. Jeanine Canty, Ph.D., TLC ’07, was a featured speaker at the Bioneers Conference on May 14, 2022. She spoke on the topic of Unraveling Collective Narcissism: Transforming Self/Mending Earth.

Dr. Debby Flickinger, Ph.D., TSD 18, co-authored a chapter titled “An Alternative to Socio-Economic Injustice: Perspectives for a Culture of Care Post COVID-19” for a new book, Innovative Strategic Planning and International Collaboration for the Mitigation for Global Crisis, edited by Gabriela Antošová, published by IGI Global.

Natalie Gomez, PCC ’19 , has a thriving podcast: Interbeing is a transdisciplinary, embodied wisdom podcast sharing practical approaches to healing and liberation through metaphysics, science, spirituality, philosophy, and more.

Natalie also has recently published Wake Up, Wise One: A Dreaming, Awakening, and Embodying Journal for anyone with a daily journaling practice. Visit her website.

Maitri Gopalakrishna, PDT ’08, was interviewed in FirstPost Magazine on how she infuses Drama Therapy in counseling.

Dr. Judy Grahn, Ph.D., WSD '99, has won the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology's “Sarasvati Nonfiction Book Award” for her book, Eruptions of Inanna (2021), a Sinister Wisdom and Nightboat Books publication! Grahn received the award at the virtual 2022 ASWM Symposium on April 10th (https://womenandmyth.org/events/symposium/).

Judy is an internationally known poet, author, mythographer, and cultural theorist. Her works include seven books of nonfiction, two book-length poems, five poetry collections, a reader, and a novel. An early Gay activist who walked the first picket of the White House for Gay rights in 1965, she later founded Gay Women’s Liberation and the Women’s Press Collective. Her intention with writing is to replace obsolete philosophies with better ones.

Sandra Ingerman, MA, ICP 82, was the featured speaker at the Dreamwork Summit, a free online event April 18 - 22, 2022. She is a world-renowned teacher of shamanism and is recognized for bridging ancient cross-cultural healing methods with modern culture. She's been teaching for almost 40 years, and has taught workshops worldwide on shamanic journeying, healing, and reversing environmental pollution using spiritual methods.

Sandra is a licensed marriage and family therapist, professional mental health counselor, and a board-certified expert on traumatic stress. Watkins Body Mind Spirit magazine honored her by including her in their 100 Most Spiritually Influential People of 2020. She was also chosen as one of the Top 10 Spiritual Leaders of 2013 by Spirituality and Health magazine and was awarded the 2007 Peace Award from the Global Foundation for Integrative Medicine.

She's an award-winning author of 12 books, including Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self... Medicine for the Earth... Walking in Light... and The Book of Ceremony: Shamanic Wisdom for Invoking the Sacred in Everyday Life. She's also been a presenter for eight audio programs produced by Sounds True.

Since the 1980s, thousands of people have healed from past and present traumas through Soul Retrieval, the classic cross-cultural shamanic healing method Sandra teaches. Sandra joined in partnership with Renee Baribeau to create a weekly, 30-minute podcast called The Shamans Cave.

Jonathan Kay, EWP '20

An internationally recognized jazz/improv multi-instrumentalist (saxophones, esraj, bansuri, shakuhachi), who hails from Toronto, Canada.

In search of non-western ways of musical knowing, Jonathan moved to Kolkata, India, and for 10 years studied traditional North Indian Raga music, innovating its expression on the saxophone. He also traveled to Kyoto on multiple occasions to learn Japanese shakuhachi music.

Jonathan’s immersion in Eastern wisdom traditions, grounded in his practice of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, has inspired psycho-cosmological approaches to transcultural musical expression through experimental and contemplative models of improvisation.

Jonathan is a Ph.D. student in the department of East-West Psychology at CIIS under the mentorship of Dr. Debashish Banerji. He is currently exploring posthuman horizons between thought and sound/music based on the intersectionality of Sri Aurobindo and Gilles Deleuze, which has inspired arts-based research projects such as, Sonic Mandalas of Becoming: An Experimental Sono-Poetic Arts-based Inquiry. He is doing an autoethnographic dissertation exploring contemplative and experimental horizons between thought and sound, based on his life as a transcultural musician.

He is also an Assistant in the EWP program, who produces and co-hosts the East-West Psychology Podcast, as well as the Metamorphosis Lecture Series and the Annual EWP Student Symposium.

For more information and links to his music, please visit www.jonathankay.ca .
Jonathan also runs an Online music label, Monsoon-Music, who host events such as Contemplative Listening.

Heidi Kraay, CIA’16, was recently featured on the MFA Program Artifact podcast. Heidi is a writer and playwright across disciplines, had an ambitious project in mind, percolating in her imagination — to craft a century cycle, a series of essays each comprising a list of 100 things.

Heidi has been awarded grants from the COVID Cultural Commissioning Fund, The Cabin, Idaho Commission on the Arts, Alexa Rose Foundation, Boise City Department of Arts & History and Boise Weekly. She is a member Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.

Congratulations to Dr. Philip McAdoo, ED.D., TLD ’08, for his role as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consultant on the cast of the Broadway Musical, A Strange Loop - winner of this year's Tony Awards for Best Musical & Best Book of a Musical. Dr. McAdoo continues to serve as vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) with Earthjustice, a premier nonprofit environmental law organization.

Katie McCleary, WRC ’2008, has co-authored a book that Inc. Magazine named 1 of 3 business books to read in 2022. Bridge the Gap: Breakthrough Communication Tools to Transform Work Relationships from Challenging to Collaborative (McGraw-Hill, Feb 2022) equips working professionals with the skills of curiosity, presence, listening, and more to change negative and polarizing relationship dynamics. Katie’s work has been featured in Forbes, NPR, PBS, NY Post, Shondaland, Mashable, and more. She is a Senior Fellow with the American Leadership Forum and is host of The Drive Podcast on NPR’s CapRadio in Sacramento, CA.

Leslie Meehan, PCC, ’10, holds a Ph.D. from CIIS, along with an MSEE from Stanford University. She specializes in designing collaborative networks. After establishing The Gaiafield Project, she founded the Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory (TRCC) , a U.S.-based network of regional and national leaders.

Her dissertation at CIIS, Our Birth As Holo Sapiens: Navigating Our Passage Through Climate Change also centers around subtle activism.also centers around subtle activism.
A committed leader in community healing and transformation, Meehan has 30+ years of experience in systems architecture, strategic planning, intuitive process, management, and peer facilitation in business and nonprofits.

When asked about her education, she said, “As an active network weaver, I come across many other CIIS alumni throughout the course of my work. In these relationships, my degree from CIIS establishes a natural kinship and trust. CIIS gives me credibility that opens doors so I can accomplish the work I’m passionate about.”

Sandy Miranda, WSE ‘04, recently published, Tuning In: A Memoir of Transformation Through the Magic of Radio. Sandy is a San Francisco native whose passion for global roots music led her to a radio broadcast career in the Bay Area for over thirty years. A voting member of The Grammys and of Na Hoku Hano Hano Hawaiian music awards, Sandy received a California State Award for journalism, and, in 2010, a Hawaiian “Aloha Spirit” award, from leading Hawaiian elders in San Francisco.

Diane Ngoc Nguyen, ICP ’11, “Departing from CIIS, I had a vague idea of what inter-generational trauma meant. Truth be told, I had a vague idea of what I went through meant. But with a leap of faith, I heeded the advice of experienced professors who encouraged investing in trainings (and in meditation). This led to a deep dive that ensued for many years, in the trenches of public mental health and in my own psyche/body, to heal what happened in this generation but also in the generation’s past. I'm presently practicing in San Jose, CA and in other regions of the world virtually.” Website

David Nicol, Ph.D., PCC, ’02 & ’10, is the co-founder (with his wife Kate Naga) of EarthRising, an emerging global community dedicated to seeding the new era of life on Earth through harnessing the power of coherent group consciousness for personal and planetary healing. He is the author of Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation (SUNY Press), the first comprehensive study of the idea that focused collective meditation can contribute powerfully and measurably to social change. In addition to his work on The Gaiafield Project, he is also the director and co-founder of BeThePeace and WiseUSA, initiatives that have united tens of thousands of people worldwide for large-scale meditations dedicated to social change. David has taught on subtle activism at the California Institute of Integral Studies and The Shift Network.

Dr. Dave Odorisio, Ph.D., EWP '15, published his first book, Merton and Hinduism which is the first book to thoroughly and definitively trace the lasting influence of Yoga and Hindu traditions on the life and writings of Thomas Merton, Catholic Priest and Trappist Monk, and pioneer of inter-religious dialogue.

William Peters, ICP ’03, published At Heaven’s Door: What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife Teach about Dying Well and Living Better (Simon & Schuster on Jan. 11,2022). Long whispered about in the hospice and medical communities, these extraordinary moments of final passage are openly discussed and explained in At Heaven’s Door. The book is filled with powerful tales of spouses on departing this earth after decades together and bereaved parents who share their children’s entry into the afterlife. Applying rigorous research, Peters digs into the effect these shared crossing experiences impart.

Laura Rivas, CAST ’08, is an educator, advocate and organizer working at Oakland Unified School District as a Community School Manager. Laura specializes in transformative family engagement and strengthening partnerships between families and school staff as part of a holistic community approach to learning and growth. Laura recently co-authored a book, Trauma-Responsive Family Engagement in Early Childhood: Practice for Equity and Resilience. Laura is passionate about decolonizing learning spaces for youth and families.

Dr. Nermin Soyalp, TSD ‘19, published a new book, Historical Traumas, which talks about the deep wounds that exist from long-standing conflicts between Turks, Kurds, and Armenians that not yet have been sufficiently addressed and healed. Nermin explains the collective traumas and their significant psychosocial impacts in terms of the potential for reconciliation among these politically conflicted groups.

Dr. Becca Tarnas, Ph.D., PCC 13 &’18, is a scholar, artist, and editor of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. Her dissertation is titled The Back of Beyond: The Red Books of C. G. Jung and J. R. R. Tolkien. Her research interests include depth psychology, archetypal studies, literature, philosophy, and the ecological imagination. She teaches as an adjunct at both Pacifica Graduate Institute and CIIS and is the author of the book, Journey to the Imaginal Realm: A Reader’s Guide to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Dr. Nick Walker, Ph.D., BIS ’06, SOM ’10, & TSD ’19, was featured in conversation with Transformation@CIIS on video. Transformation @CIIS is a monthly conversation with CIIS students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Sponsored by the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, they talk to activists, scholars, and other community members whose research, work, and art, highlight an area of social justice.

Dr. Nick Walker has also come out with a new book, Neuroqueer Heresies. Neuroqueer Heresies collects a decade's worth of Dr. Walker's influential writings on neurodiversity, along with brand new material on Neuroqueer Theory.

Dr. Kerri Welch, PhD, PCC ’03 & 10, is a philosopher of time, mind, and physics. She teaches as an adjunct at CIIS for PCC and SUS, including classes such as: Modern Physics, The Texture of Time, Archeoastronomy, Sacred Geometry, Mathematical Archetypes, and Infographics. She is the author of A Fractal Topology of Time: Deepening Into Timelessness.

On March 14,2022, Dr. Mara Keller,Ph.D., and current WSE chair, Dr. Annette Williams, Ph.D., WSE ’14, were interviewed for KPFA radio program, Women’s Magazine, by the show’s founder and producer, Lisa Dettmer. Women’s Magazine is “a weekly hour of programming devoted to womanist/feminist perspectives on news and culture.”

Dr. Megan Rose Woolever, Ph.D., EWP ‘19, recently published, Spirit Marriage: Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings, which made Amazon’s Top 5 in 3 categories.

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