IMS Online Learning Center

Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher with a lifelong interest in blending spirituality and meditation with social justice. Having grown up in an ecumenical Christian community where families practiced a new kind of monasticism and worked with the poor, at the age of twenty-five she entered a Buddhist monastery in the Plum Village tradition and spent fifteen years living as a nun under the guidance of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She received Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh and became a Zen teacher in 2007, and is also a teacher in the Vipassana Insight lineage through Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Today she sees her work as a continuation of the Engaged Buddhism developed by Thich Nhat Hanh as well as the work of her parents, inspired by their stories and her dad’s work with Martin Luther King Jr. on desegregating the South. In addition to writing "We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption," she is also the editor of Thich Nhat Hanh’s "Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children." Now based in New York, she teaches and leads retreats internationally, provides spiritual mentoring to groups, and interweaves art, play, nature, racial and earth justice, and embodied mindfulness practice in her teaching. She especially feels called to share the Dharma with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, as well as activists, educators, youth, artists, and families. Visit kairajewel.com to learn more.

Valerie Brown is an author, ordained Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition, facilitator, and executive coach specializing in leadership development and mindfulness with a focus on diversity, social equity, and inclusion. A former lawyer and lobbyist, Valerie transformed her high-pressure, twenty-year corporate career into serving leaders and nonprofits to create trustworthy, authentic, compassionate, and connected workspaces. She is the author of Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace (Broadleaf, 2022). An accredited leadership coach, she is the Founder and Chief Mindfulness Officer of Lead Smart Coaching, LLC, supporting leaders to apply and integrate leadership and mindfulness for greater resilience, clarity, and creativity, and is a co-director of Georgetown’s Institute for Transformational Leadership. Visit valeriebrown.us to learn more.

Marisela Gomez is a mindfulness practitioner (ordained in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing), public health activist, and physician. Of-Afro-Latina ancestry, she lives in Baltimore involved in social justice activism and community building/research. Author of Race, Class, Power and Organizing in East Baltimore, and numerous book chapters, popular and scholarly publications. She blogs at HuffPost and marsielabgomez.com on the intersection of wisdom, justice, and mindfulness.