Founder, Executive Director, Board Member

After a spiritual crisis at the beginning of college, Aaron began practicing Mysore-style Ashtanga Yoga with Angela Jamison in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His interest in practice deepened when he encountered Zen on a trip to Dai Bosatsu Zendo with an emerging student meditation group at Wesleyan University. During his senior year, he worked with the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship to co-found Dharma Gates and wrote an honors thesis in philosophy on the relationship between traditions of embodied practices, trauma, and cultural transformation. Since graduating in 2019, he’s continued to build Dharma Gates while in residency at the Ann Arbor Zen Buddhist Temple, Great Vow Zen Monastery, and Fire Lotus Temple. To date, Aaron has spent 10 months in silent meditation retreats in the Zen and Theravada traditions.

Lead Program Coordinator, Founder, Board Member

Since he was young, Nicky has been inspired by the freedom that's possible through meditation. Inspired by this, in 2018, Nicky helped to start Wes Sangha, a student-lead meditation group at Wesleyan University. For the past seven years, Nicky has been meditating in monasteries and on retreats. He just finished a year of practicing in Asia at Monasteries in Malaysia and Thailand and is currently practicing meditation full-time in Europe and the US. Before this, Nicky studied at Wesleyan University, earning a Bachelor's degree in physics with a minor in economics, a Master's degree in physics, and winning a NESCAC Football Championship. He published twice in Physical Review Applied, a top physics journal. He lived in Boulder, CO for four years where he was a teacher, engineer, and activist with local environmental and animal rights groups.

Director of Operations

Blessing is a formal training student of the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism. In addition to their role with Dharma Gates, they also oversee operations for the Zen Center of New York City, where they first practiced zazen in 2013. They have work experience in management consulting, human resources transformation, and business transformation. In their free time, they enjoy volunteering with LGBTQIA+ organizations and have completed Peace Corps service (Malawi, 2009-12). Born and raised in Kansas, they studied English Literature at Boston University and completed their Master of Business Administration at Georgetown University.

Program Coordinator

Sydney first encountered formal meditation practice through a Dharma Gates retreat in early 2020. During the height of the pandemic, she took the year off from Wesleyan University for a residency at Zen Mountain Monastery. Upon returning to school, Sydney recognized the importance of a supportive Sangha in the cultivation of her meditation practice. She revived the meditation groups on campus (which had vanished in the pandemic) and found joy in wise friendships at school. Sydney studied Science and Society with concentrations in Physics and Religion, and earned her Bachelor’s degree in 2023. Sydney now lives in Philadelphia with her cat, Sasha.

Program Coordinator

After studying Economics and Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill, Benjamin taught English in Malaysia for one year. It was during this year in Asia when he first encountered the profundity of the Dharma. More recently, Benjamin was a community organizer/neighborhood connection-wizard in Washington, D.C. after lobbying a real estate company to turn a vacant lot into a community garden. Throughout these experiences, Benjamin has cherished helping create fertile soil for young people (including himself) to attune to the world with more care and to lean into a more soulful, more textured life. He also feels motivated, and deeply confused, by the intersecting problems of our global meta-crisis: the meaning crisis, the climate crisis, and the mental health epidemic. He has been meditating for ten years and has spent 6 months on silent retreat, primarily in the Zen and Theravada traditions

Board of Directors & Founder

Bo-Mi is a Senior Dharma Teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen and has been the faculty advisor for the Harvard Meditation Club since 2009. She started practicing Zen in 2004 at the Cambridge Zen Center where she served for four years in the capacity of Director of Development and Outreach. Outside of her work in meditation communities, Bo-Mi worked as a film and multi-media producer and is a philosophy teacher. Born in Seoul, South-Korea, she grew up in Hamburg, Germany, where she studied law before she came to the United States to pursue a degree in philosophy. She received her Ph.D. in Modern European Intellectual History from the University of Chicago and teaches critical theory and continental philosophy on the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University.

Board of Directors & Founder

Miles graduated from Wesleyan University in 2011 and spent five years studying meditation full-time, including two years at monasteries and practice centers in Asia, two years of solitary retreat under the guidance of Alan Wallace, Ph.D. and Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D. He completed the Master’s of Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania where his studies focused on the intersection of meditation and modern science. He currently teaches at NYU through MindfulNYU. In addition to classical meditation, Miles has a passion for interpersonal meditation as a way to increase emotional intelligence and build coherence and psychological safety in individuals, teams, and families. He has co-facilitated interpersonal meditation retreats with Circling Europe and has accumulated over a thousand hours of practice and teaching with this potent form.

Teresa joyfully revels in the precious opportunity to practice and serve the Dhamma. She began her contemplative inquiries as an adolescent and has been committed to the path of liberation, wisdom and compassion ever since. Her practice has been informed by many years leading young adults, retreat centers, and diverse communities across the US and Latin America as a teacher, facilitator and guide. In 2014, she felt a deep sense of homecoming in the Theravadan lineage and organized her life around intensive silent retreat practice. She is most inspired and uplifted when engaging with the Eightfold Path, serving yogis in the depths of their healing, supporting monastic sanghas, and dedicating the merit. As a bilingual educator and multicultural mindfulness and movement teacher, Teresa is grateful for the many streams of blessings in her life and the gift of the triple jewel.

Bobby Chowa Werner is a lay Zen teacher in the White Plum Soto Zen lineage, originally transmitted to the West by Taizan Maezumi, Roshi. First arriving to practice with Seisen Saunders, Roshi in 2005, Chowa is currently the vice-abbot of Sweetwater Zen Center in San Diego, CA, where he helps Seisen manage both the spiritual and operational aspects of a residential Zen training center. He first discovered Zen and started diligently practicing within different Zen lineages at the age of 12. He is intimate with what it means to grow into adulthood in a modern world, in tandem with a dedication to Buddhist practice. Chowa is passionate about the Zen path of experiential awakening, particularly through traditional Koan practice. He is committed to ushering the Dharma into the context of ordinary life—in a way that aims to reach communities and demographics that are woefully underrepresented in American Buddhist communities and leadership.

Gavrila is a daughter, sister, devoted dhamma practitioner, singer, contemplative dreamer. Grief and the complexity of being human led Gavrila to study suffering and its end, leading her to teach mindfulness and step into the role of somatic psychotherapist. Having the great benefit of working with folks of all ages, identities, and ancestries, Gavrila knows that embodiment and mindfulness can be accessible to all and is devoted to finding the entry point for each unique person. As co-founder of the Trauma Aware Mindfulness Collective and mentee of David Treleaven, Gavrila trains and facilitates mindfulness with the global trauma-sensitive mindfulness community. She teaches the Middle School Meditation Series at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and regularly participates in long meditation retreats. Based in California, Gavrila identifies as a queer, Ashkenazi Jewess.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi is the Head of the Mountains and Rivers Order, abbot and resident teacher of Zen Mountain Monastery, and abbot of the Zen Center of New York City. Shugen Roshi has been in full-time residential training since 1986; he received dharma transmission from Daido Roshi in 1997. While he lives primarily at the Monastery, he shares his time between there and the Zen Center of New York City. His teachings on Zen, social justice, and environmental concerns have appeared in various Buddhist journals and The Best Buddhist Writing. His first book, O, Beautiful End, a collection of Zen memorial poems, was published in 2012.

Guo Gu (Dr. Jimmy Yu) is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center, the founder of the socially engaged intra-denominational Buddhist organization Dharma Relief, and a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Florida State University. He was a monk for nine years and one of the late Master Sheng Yen’s senior and closest disciples. He is the author of Silent Illumination (2021), The Essence of Chan (2020), and Passing Through the Gateless Barrier (2016). Read more about Guo Gu’s work here.

Kathy Park JDPSN began practicing Zen in the Kwan Um School of Zen in 1999 in Paris. Her experiences include training in both residential lay Zen communities and monastic temples in the U.S, Europe and Asia. She received inka (permission to teach) in 2016 in the Kwan Um tradition. Together with her husband Andrzej Stec JDPSN, they guide Zen groups in-person and online in Korea. Kathy Park JDPSN is also the abbot of Kwan Um Zen Online, the global online sangha for the Kwan Um School of Zen. She is passionate about building a global spiritual community through supporting one another with collective wisdom, diversity and creativity. She has co-translated and edited the Teachings of Man Gong and Zen master Kyong Ho’s Song of Zen from Korean into English, and focuses on making teachings from the Korean Zen Buddhist tradition available in English.

Kisei Costenbader, Sensei is an ordained Zen priestess, monastic, and Zen teacher in the Zen Community of Oregon. She currently lives at Great Vow Zen Monastery where she is the Director of Training. Kisei has the heart of a mystic and poet. She is deeply committed to the monastic path and the role of monasteries as seedbeds of collective awakening within a culture and society. Kisei is part of the Engaged Buddhism Committee and is the President of the Board of the Zen Community of Oregon. She is interested in the intersection of waking up and justice making. Her teaching is inspired by the poetry and writings of the Women Buddhist Ancestors and the Zen koan tradition. She is an embodied teacher with a passion for the truth.

Christopher Keevil is the founder and a Senior Advisor at Wellspring Consulting, a national firm that helps non-profit leaders develop strategy for the future. He has provided guidance to several hundred organizations in the social sector in fields such as religion and spirituality, education, environmental advocacy, social services, and the arts. Previously, Chris was a Partner at The Boston Consulting Group, an international management consultancy that advised businesses and multi-national corporations. Earlier he worked as a carpenter and as a folk-dance musician and caller. Chris is also a recognized meditation teacher, having received Inka from his Teacher, Zen Master Bo Mun (George Bowman). He has been practicing Zen since 1991 and teaching since 1998 in the lineage of his teacher, who is a dharma heir of the Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn. Chris leads meditation gatherings and retreats virtually, and in the New Haven, Connecticut, area where he lives.

Rabbi David is the founding director of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life at Wesleyan University as well as the director of Mindfulness at Wesleyan. He studied at Columbia University (BA), The Jewish Theological Seminary (BA), the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (MHL and Rabbinic Ordination), and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2015 he completed a second Smikha/Ordination with Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal in the lineage of his beloved teacher and friend Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z'l. Among David’s many meditation teachers have been Sylvia Boorstein and Sheila Peltz Weinberg. Rabbi David has decades of experience mentoring young people and counseling undergraduates. He serves as a consultant on grant-writing and navigating higher education and university matters.