Peter Rollins is an author, philosopher, storyteller, producer and public speaker who has gained an international reputation for overturning traditional notions of religion and forming “churches” that preach the Good News that we can’t be satisfied, that life is difficult, and that we don’t know the secret.
At 19, while in his sophomore year of college, BJ was electrocuted and subsequently became a triple amputee. Undaunted, BJ returned to Princeton to study art history and eventually decided to focus on medicine, which ultimately led him into palliative care.
Shoshana Berger is the editorial director at IDEO and coauthor of the book A Beginners Guide To The End. Shoshana got her start as a writer for a magazine called Bikini (no jokes) for whom she interviewed Jeff Buckley and Allen Ginsberg.
Stephen Mitchell is an author and translator best known for his bestselling adaptions of the Tao Te Ching, Gilgamesh, the Illiad, Bhagavadgita, Book of Job, and collaborations with his wife Byron Katie. He was educated at Yale and De-educated through his intensive zen practice.
David Sheff is the author of Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction, a number-one New York Times bestseller. The book was based on his article, “My Addicted Son,” which appeared in the New York Times Magazine and won a special award from the American Psychological Association for “outstanding contribution to the understanding of addiction.” Beautiful Boy, published in a dozen language, was named the year’s Best Nonfiction Book by Entertainment Weekly, an Amazon “Best Books of 2008,” and it won first place in the Barnes and Noble Discover Award in nonfiction.
Mark Wolynn is the director of the Family Constellation Institute in San Francisco. He is a leading expert in the field of inherited family trauma. His book It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle(published by Viking/Penguin) is the winner of the 2016 Nautilus Book Award in psychology, and has been translated into 18 languages. His articles have appeared in Psychology Today, Mind Body Green, MariaShriver.com, Elephant Journal and Psych Central, and his poetry has been published in The New Yorker.
Illustrator and author Lisa Congdon is best known for her colorful, graphic drawings and hand lettering.
She works for clients around the world including Comme des Garçons, Crate and Barrel, Facebook, MoMA, REI, and Harvard University among many others.
He once shared abandoned houses with cockroaches on the streets of Detroit in the dead of winter, and now he lives in a luxurious high-rise penthouse in downtown PDX. His story epitomizes transformation.
The story on the bread bag remained unchanged until 2014 after Dahl had a well-publicized mental breakdown.
Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest, author, and founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world.
Roxan McDonald is a writer, teacher, workshop facilitator, coach, and public speaker. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Education from California Institute of Integral Studies.
Judith Orloff, MD is a New York Times best-selling author and an empath who loves being sensitive! She has written The Empath’s Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People and her upcoming book Thriving as an Empath offers daily self-care tools for sensitive people along with its companion The Empath’s Empowerment Journal.
Scott Stabile is a writer, speaker and workshop wizard. He is the author of the books Big Love: The Power of Living With a Wide Open Heart, Just Love, and Iris. His inspirational social media posts have been shared tens of millions of times, and he has attracted a huge and devoted online following.
For 26 years Nicole Lazzaro has run XEODesign to unlock human potential through play. From designing the first iPhone game, to planting 16K trees in Madagascar, to authoring the 4 Keys to Fun her work inspires millions of leading developers worldwide including The Sims, Myst, and Star Wars.
Sabrina Ward Harrison published her first book, Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself, at the age of 23. Written between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, Spilling Open was an intimate and moving picture of the contradictions young women face as they are asked to grow into societal norms of femininity. Her tender honesty and singular aesthetic energy turned Harrison into the voice of a generation.
A week in the life of poetic voice, Sekou Andrews, could find him keynoting at a leadership conference, helping a Fortune 500 company with brand messaging, or performing for Barack Obama in Oprah Winfrey’s backyard. This schoolteacher turned two-time national poetry slam champion has now become the world’s leading “Poetic Voice” - a new type of speaker and artist who seamlessly blends inspirational speaking with spoken word poetry, combining the value of a business keynote with the inspiration of a powerful performance.
Matthias Roberts is a writer, therapist, and host of Queerology: A Podcast on Belief and Being. His work has been featured in HuffPost Religion, Believe Out Loud, OnFaith, and The Seattle Times. He holds an MA in Theology and Culture and an MA in Counseling Psychology from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.
Singer and Songwriter J.R. Rhodes believes that music heals and that love is real. From her first open-mic performances at the O.K. Hotel, Seattle, to her latest album I Am, these beliefs in the transformative power of song are distilled into gems of quiet intensity that traverse blues, jazz, folk and rock.
Lisa's writing focuses on people living with neurological diseases and disorders who tend to be ignored, feared, or misunderstood, portrayed within a narrative that is accessible to the general public. Through fiction, she is dedicated to describing with passion and accuracy the journeys of those affected by neurological diseases, thereby educating, demystifying, and inspiring support for care and scientific research. She has written about Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury, autism, Huntington's disease, and ALS.
