Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Th.D. is a Community Dharma Leader (Insight Meditation) and Zen student. She is the co-editor of “Black & Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us about Race, Resilience, Transformation & Freedom” and her other books about Buddhism and womanist theology are “Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, U.S. Law and Womanist Theology for Transgender Spiritual Care” and “Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality in Womanist Practical Theology” She has contributed to Buddhadharma and Lion’s Roar magazine: https://www.lionsroar.com/author/pamela-ayo-yetunde/.

Ayo is a pastoral counselor with Center of the Heart (www.centeroftheheart.org) and teaches pastoral care and counseling, and Buddhist chaplaincy at Upaya Zen Center.

Mama D Ujuaje is a co-curator of ‘The Food and Otherworldly Sensory Journeys’ and a natural and life-long learning facilitator through plant whispering and embracing the mysteries of the primordial. Mama D works towards encouraging people of all descriptions to embrace agency in affirmatively reshaping our shared environments. She encourages considerate, mind-and-body-full and wholistic living through the use of a range of enjoyable, reflective, engaging and sometimes disruptive experiences. Transformation, Mama D feels, requires at least momentary detachment!

Mama D has worked in different physical environments, learning from all the elements that nourish and now realise that there is still more digesting to do. Food is such a good metaphor! She is a Food and other Social Justices advocate and organiser, writer and mediator. Mama D works at soil-soul level where the grass roots are to be found. She supports the navigation of our relationships within the context of the ordinary extraordinary and using the me-ness of us-ness to bring Ubuntu irrationalities into our exchanges.

Satyani McPherson, since discovering meditation and yoga over three decades ago, she has cherished the healing and illuminating benefits of these practices. A passion for spiritual insight has persisted since childhood. This quest continued as a philosophy major in college; a jazz musician in NYC, LA, and Honolulu; and while doing video documentation and living in Africa, Europe, and Asia. Since returning to the USA her life has been nourished by silent mindfulness retreats and nondual teachings. Satyani is certified through the Mindfulness Yoga & Meditation Training Program (Spirit Rock Meditation Center), Teach .b (Mindfulness in Schools Project), and the Lineage Project (Mindfulness Practices for Youth at Risk). She has found it rewarding to facilitate mindfulness classes for youth in various educational programs and for women in the criminal justice system. Satyani is inspired to share practices that can empower people to more effectively navigate life’s circumstances from their innate conscious awareness.