Stanford's Compassion Training Course (CTC) Contributors
Author of the Stanford Compassion Training protocol
President, Institute of Tibetan Classics
Thupten Jinpa received his early education as a monk at Ganden Monastic University, South India, where he obtained the Geshe Lharam degree. Jinpa holds a B.A. Honors in philosophy and a Ph.D. in religious studies, both from Cambridge University, U.K., where he also worked as a research fellow in Eastern religions at Girton College. Jinpa has been the principal English translator to H.H. the Dalai Lama for over two decades and has translated and edited numerous books by the Dalai Lama including Ethics for the New Millennium, Transforming the Mind, Universe in a Single Atom: Convergence of Science and Spirituality and Towards a True Kinship of Faiths. His own publications include, among others, Self, Reality and Reason in Tibetan Philosophy and Mind Training: The Great Collection.
Jinpa is the founder and president of the Institute of Tibetan Classics and heads its project of editing, translation and publication of key classical Tibetan texts featured in The Library of Tibetan Classics series. As a long-time member of the Mind and Life Institute, Jinpa has been actively involved in the field of contemplative research. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, Canada and has been, since 2008, a visiting scholar and an Executive Committee Member of CCARE (Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education) at Stanford University.
Co-author and Senior Teacher of the Stanford Compassion Training Course
Health Psychologist, Stanford University
Kelly McGonigal, PhD, is a health psychologist at Stanford University and a leading expert on the mind-body relationship. She co-authored the Compassion Cultivation Training course, and taught the first CTC class in 2010. In addition to teaching for CCARE, she teaches for the School of Medicine’s Health Improvement Program. Her popular public courses through Stanford’s Continuing Studies program—including the Science of Willpower and the Science of a Calmed Mind—demonstrate the applications of psychological science to personal health and happiness, as well as organizational success and social change.
She received her PhD in psychology from Stanford University, with a concentration in humanistic medicine. She was awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Fellowship for her work on how different strategies for handling difficult emotions influence physical health and close relationships. Her scientific research has been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine. She is the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal of mind-body research, healthcare policy, and clinical practice, and an ad hoc reviewer for medical journals such as Pain and the Journal of Aging and Health.
Through a wide range of conferences and university-affiliated programs, she provides continuing education and training to healthcare providers, including psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, physicians’ assistants, and fitness professionals. She is a frequent presenter at national health and wellness conferences and retreats, including the Omega Institute, the Integrative Medicine Forum, and the Life Extension Conference.
Co-author and Senior Teacher of the Stanford Compassion Training Course
Erika Rosenberg specializes in integrating traditional Buddhist practices with key concepts and techniques from Western Psychology to help people navigate the challenges of daily life and work. Erika has drawn on her 20 years of meditation practice to help craft the CTC. Her primary background is in Tibetan Buddhism (Nyingma lineage), and she has been influenced profoundly by Vipassana teachings.
Erika Rosenberg received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, San Francisco (1994) and her B.S. in Neuroscience from San Jose State University (1986). Dr. Rosenberg’s scientific research has examined how our feelings are revealed in our facial expressions, how social factors influence emotional signals, and how anger affects cardiovascular health. Her work is published in a wide range of psychological journals and books, and she speaks at national conferences on the topics of emotions and facial expressions. Erika Rosenberg currently collaborates with other scientists on numerous projects in psychology, medicine, and computer science. Dr. Rosenberg served on the faculties of the University of Delaware and the College of William and Mary, currently conducts research at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, teaches at the Nyingma Institute of Tibetan Studies in Berkeley, and offers workshops worldwide.
Co-author and Senior Teacher of the Stanford Compassion Training Course
"Compassion is the single most important quality I wish to cultivate in myself and the world. it holds the greatest promise for ending the cycles of violence and retribution on every level - intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergenerational and societal." -Margaret Cullen, MFT
Margaret joined the CTC collaboration after Jinpa asked her to join a brainstorming session on the curriculum. "It is impossible to say no to Jinpa." Margaret is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher, having trained extensively with Jon Kabat-Zinn. She has also trained with Zindel Segal in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and in MB Eat with Jean Kristeller. For sixteen years she has been teaching and pioneering mindfulness programs in a variety of settings including cancer support, HIV support, physician groups, executive groups, teachers and Kaiser patients.
She collaborated on teaching and writing curricula for several research programs at UCSF including "Cultivating Emotional Balance" designed for teachers and "Craving and Lifestyle Management with Meditation" for overweight women. In 2008 she launched a mindfulness-based emotional balance program (SMART) for teachers and school administrators in Denver, Boulder, Ann Arbor and Vancouver, B.C. She has collaborated on the revision of mindfulness curricula for Kaiser, northern California, and for the Center for Compassion at Stanford and spoken publicly on these and related topics, including forgiveness and conflict resolution. She has also been a facilitator of support groups for cancer patients and their loved ones for twenty years at The Wellness Community. A meditation practitioner for thirty years, she is a frequent contributor to "Inquiring Mind".
Associate Director of CCARE, Senior Research Scientist, Stanford University
"I see compassion as the key to the next phase of evolution of human consciousness. With greater emphasis on compassion will come stronger collective achievement and individual opportunity to flourish. Competition and drive will be fueled by the challenge to discover means of enhancing wellness, and worldwide ills like crime, warfare and exploitation will lack incentive. I practice compassion cultivation to show kindness to myself, to hone my capacity to interact with others in the most mutually beneficial manner, and to discover wisdom from problem-solving to address the needs of many." -Emiliana Simon-Thomas, PhD
Emiliana's contribution to CTC involves identifying its benefits from a scientific perspective. Stanford Compassion Training is a carefully devised program to enhancing people's awareness of, capacity for, sensitivity to, and inclination towards compassion in daily life. There has been little scientific examination of compassion, which is commonly chalked up as an immovable personality trait. To highlight compassion and promote it's scientific inquiry, Emiliana, along with several colleagues, published a paper reviewing the meaning, adaptive purpose, and underlying functions of compassion (Goetz et. al., 2009). Few efforts have been committed to developing tools to promote compassion, or to justifying the value that compassion adds to health and well being at individual, societal and even ecosystem levels. Emiliana's aim is to contribute to the growth of a strong scientific literature on compassion.
Emiliana began to study compassion in 2005, and learned about SCT in 2010. Her studies of CTC with CCARE began in 2011. Emiliana Simon-Thomas earned her doctorate in Cognition Brain and Behavior at University of California, Berkeley studying the interplay between emotional and cognitive processes. Using behavioral, EEG and fMRI methods, her dissertation research investigated the effects of emotional aversion on higher cognitive task performance, and highlighted the important influences that negative emotions can have on thinking. Transitioning to the role of thinking in emotions (appraisal, self-regulation) and focusing on positive states, Dr. Simon-Thomas studied positive and pro-social emotions during her postdoc under the mentorship of esteemed Social Psychologist, Dr. Dacher Keltner, also at UCB. From emotion signaling, perception and self-report to neural activation during induced compassion, Emiliana's research continues to examine the conceptual nature of, experiential properties of, and biological mechanisms that contribute to compassion.
Director of Compassion Education for CCARE, Stanford University
Leah Weiss Ekstrom is a Contemplative Educator whose research focuses on the application of meditation in secular contexts. She has taught in a variety of settings including at Harvard affiliated hospitals, the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, the Alzheimer’s association, and the National HIV/AIDS Conference. In 2008, Leah co-founded the Foundation for Active Compassion, a nonprofit organization which provides meditation practices of compassion and wisdom to people involved in social service and social change work. Her current book projects include “Active Compassion—Meditations to Empower Those who Serve Others,” coauthored with John Makransky, and “Directions of Interreligious Pedagogy,” which explores how interreligious education can support peacebuilding efforts. Leah is trained as a meditation teacher and has engaged in extensive retreat practice in the Kagyu/Nyingma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Leah’s work at CCARE will include developing and directing the Compassion Training Teacher Certification program as well as other educational initiatives such as the application of compassion meditation in schools.
Leah received her BA from Stanford University, her MA in clinical social work from Boston College, and is completing her doctoral program in theology and education at Boston College.
CCARE Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University
Dr. Yotam Heineberg earned his undergraduate degree in psychology and comparative literature at Tel Aviv University. He completed his doctorate in clinical psychology at the PGSP-Stanford consortium focusing on the cycle of violence, trauma and aggression. His dissertation, chaired by Dr. Leonard Beckum, was entitled “Post Traumatic Responses; the Extended Impact of Inner City Realities on Children and Adolescents.” Yotam’s passion has been finding effective methods for healing the cycle of violence with compassion. With his mentors Drs. Rony Berger and Philip Zimbardo, Yotam has worked hard to promote “ERASE-Stress-Pro-Social”, a school-based program that reduces post traumatic distress and increases pro social engagement in warzones and inner cities. In his clinical work, Yotam aspires to help clients cultivate self-agency, as well as self and other directed compassion. Yotam is currently directing a research project to examine the processes of heroic transformation from violence to peacemaker among former gang members. Yotam is working at CCARE, under the guidance of Dr. Lee Ross, to further discover the mechanisms of pro-social engagement and altruism, as well as develop methods to cultivate compassionate ways of being.
Director and Founder of Project Compassion
Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery, Stanford University
Dr. Doty is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University. He completed his undergraduate training at the University of CA, Irvine and medical school at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, LA. In addition to being a neurosurgeon, he is also an inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist, having given support to a number of charitable organizations including Children as the Peacemakers, Global Healing and Family & Children Services. These charities support a variety of programs throughout the world including those for HIV/AIDS support, blood banks, medical care in third world countries and peace initiatives. Additionally, he has endowed chairs at major universities including Stanford University School of Medicine and his alma mater, Tulane University School of Medicine. As founder of Project Compassion, Dr. Doty works with both the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neuroscience and a variety of scientists from a number of disciplines examining the neural bases for compassion and altruism. He is on the Board of Directors of a number of non-profit foundations including the University of Southern California Brain and Creativity Institute, the Dalai Lama Foundation and the Friends of New Orleans (FONO).
Program Coordinator, Stanford University
Joel is a graduate of degree in neuroscience and has had a long time interest in understanding the brain mechanisms underlying emotion including compassion and empathy. Until joining Project Compassion, he was employed at Google, Inc. most recently working with Google University and the Google School for Personal Growth.
