Scroll Down to View the Karuna School: Board of Directors, Board of Advisors, Staff and Friends of the Karuna School 

Board of Directors

Lisa Prajna Hallstrom, co-founder, began her career as an elementary school teacher and went on to become a family therapist and personal growth group leader. She later received a PhD in comparative religion from Harvard University, specializing in the religions of India. After teaching at Bard, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke colleges, Prajna left academia to teach courses and workshops in Hindu and Buddhist mysticism and women’s spirituality. Prajna also leads Kirtan chanting groups. Her passion about the importance of including emotional education, contemplative practice and group process skills in a progressive school setting fuels her commitment to this project. She currently serves as the President of The Karuna School on the Board of Directors.
Email: phallstrom@karunaschool.org

Theodore Hallstrom, co-founder, who graduated from Harvard College and has his Masters Degree in Education from Harvard, has been a teacher and principal of both private and public schools for thirty-five years. He helped start a school in Benaras, India, and is currently on the board of Jhamtse International, a U.S. non-profit organization that supports a school for orphans of Tibetan descent in the Himalayan area of northeast India. His commitment to hands-on learning and the education of the whole child drives all of his educational endeavors. He currently serves as the Treasurer of The Karuna School on the Board of Directors.
Email: thallstrom@karunaschool.org

Olivia Hoblitzelle is a writer, psychotherapist, and teacher with a Master’s Degree in counseling. She has taught in the field of Behavorial Medicine where she pioneered how to bring meditation, yoga, and cognitive therapy into the medical domain to treat stress-related and chronic illness. She helped develop one of the first training programs in Mind/Body medicine in the country and trained health professionals through Harvard Medical School. Her teaching and writing are inspired by over thirty years of practice in psychology, Buddhist meditation, and the wisdom traditions. She has recently published her first book, Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows. She has served on the boards of the Insight Meditation Center, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, and the Trijang Buddhist Institute. Olivia brings her great knowledge of starting organizations as well as her passion for both contemplative practice and progressive education to the board.

Ward Mailliard is a founding member of the Mt. Madonna School in Watsonville, CA, an independent school for grades K-12, where he currently serves as a teacher and on the Executive Committee. Working in collaboration with Bill Moyers, he has pioneered a curriculum called “Values in American Thought,” and most recently “Values in World Thought,” which he has integrated into the curriculum of Mt. Madonna’s program. He has been instrumental in establishing and running the Bapa Ashram and Orphanage in Haridwar, India, a non-profit that includes a school for children grades K-12. He remains involved with this school by spending several weeks in India a year training teachers and administrative staff with the hopes of producing a self-sustainable school system. Ward’s experience as the heart of two progressive schools with spiritual foundations makes him an invaluable part of our board.

Myla Kabat-Zinn was trained as a nurse and has worked as a childbirth educator, birthing assistant, and environmental advocate. She has assisted at births both in the hospital and at home and has taught childbirth education classes based on mindful awareness and acceptance. She is co-author of Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting and leads workshops on mindful parenting in the US and abroad. Myla’s interest in exploring mindfulness in education and its applications for social emotional learning is at the core of her commitment to The Karuna School and the board.

Lewis H. Spence is presently on the faculty of Harvard University with a joint appointment from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Harvard Kennedy School where he is teaching courses on new models of educational leadership. He is trained as a lawyer and has served as Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, the Commonwealth’s child welfare program, and as Deputy Chancellor for Operations for the New York City Public Schools. He also worked as the Receiver for the bankrupt city of Chelsea, MA, a position he was appointed to by Gov. William F. Weld. Prior to this appointment, Harry served as the Court-Appointed Receiver of the Boston Housing Authority, which became a model for public housing intervention across the nation. He has also worked in private real estate development and has consulted on the Advanced Placement program to the College Board.

Margaret M. Winslow has been a resident of Newton, Massachusetts, for thirty years where she has raised her family with consistent involvement in education-oriented projects. Within the Newton community, she has served on the Boards of the Newton Schools Foundation (as well as President) and the Newton Senior Center. Margo’s career has been as a clinical social worker, from which she has recently retired from a private practice. Early in her career, she focused on hospice care and then moved on to specializing in trauma and life issues. Margo has participated as a trustee of Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland for twenty years, giving her much experience in fund raising and leadership. As a trustee at Goucher, she sat on a national chair of a capital campaign in 1994-1998, and now sits as a co-chair of a second capital campaign. Margo has been chair of the Development committee on the Goucher Board for ten years. We are now delighted to have her, and her extensive knowledge and experience, on The Karuna School Board of Directors.

Board of Advisors

Lama Tsultrim Allione
Judith Ansara
Angeles Arrien
Linda Booth Sweeney
Mirabai Bush
Brad Choyt
Peter Churchill
Robert Gass
Paula Green
Linda Lantieri
Anthony Martignetti
David Morimoto
Venerable Lobsang Phuntsok
Robert A.F. Thurman
Nena V.S. Thurman

Staff

Kim Triveni Lishansky, Business Manager
Triveni comes to the Karuna School with a background in business organizational development, having set up and managed the offices of Success Dynamics, a leadership consulting business in the Boston area since 1992. Her passion for spirituality and inner inquiry opened the opportunity for her to teach meditation in group settings for over 30 years. In 2005 she developed Access Meditation – Inner Journeys to work one on one with people to co-design fulfilling personalized meditation practices. For Triveni, being a part of the Karuna School, where students will be taught meditation as part of the regular curriculum is a vibrant opportunity. Of all of her accomplishments, Triveni is most proud of being the mother of three wonderful young people.

Friends of the Karuna School

The Karuna School has a dedicated and passionate group of volunteers that support a variety of initiatives. Friends of The Karuna School attend Karuna events and service opportunities, provide valuable insight and feedback on current and future projects and help our small team to have a large impact in our community. If you are interested in becoming involved with The Karuna School, please email klishansky@karunaschool.org

The Karuna School Welcomes Adrienne I. Miller, our Founding Head of School!

Dear Friends of Karuna,

We are thrilled to announce that, after much anticipation, Adrienne I. Miller has begun her tenure as the Founding Head of the Karuna School! Before you read her introductory letter, we would like to tell you a little bit about Adrienne and about the process that brought her to us.

As you may know, we searched in earnest for the right person to fulfill the exacting role Founding Head of School for over two years. As part of the search process each member of the Karuna School Board of Directors drafted a description of the ideal Head of School. Some of the qualities we all agreed were essential in the Head of the Karuna School were the following: the ability to convey to young people a deep respect and caring within the context of high expectations and a strong structure, the ability to articulate a set of moral values on behalf of the school community that characterize the culture of the school while conscientiously seeking to embody those values, and the ability to approach young people as whole human beings faced with the same issues of moral agency and meaning as adults.

In the spring of 2010 mutual friends told us about an extraordinary young woman who had been a faculty member at the Groton School for the past six years teaching history, sponsoring the Hindu/Buddhist sangha, and directing Groton’s global education initiative. They encouraged us to meet this friend, Adrienne Miller, simply to share mutual interests. The first time that Ted and I sat down with Adrienne around our kitchen table, we were all electrified by the points of connection between us and our conversation went on for several hours. We immediately felt, “This is the person we have been waiting for!” None of us could hide our enthusiasm about the possibility of our working together to create a new kind of school whose pillars would be mindfulness, sustainability, and compassion.

Over that summer Adrienne took some Groton students to East Africa for a service learning experience. We anxiously awaited her return, hoping that we could soon introduce her to our Board. Last fall we embarked on a series of interviews and meetings with Adrienne. As part of the process, Ted and I sat in on one of Adrienne’s classes at Groton, a sacred text course with 9th graders. It brought us to tears to watch Adrienne skillfully and lovingly inspire her students to probe the depths of the Bhagavad Gita and its timeless lessons. In November at our Board meeting, a member of our Board expressed a sentiment shared by all, “Remember the writing exercise we did last winter? Adrienne fulfills all our expectations and more!” By December we had completed the process and made an official offer to Adrienne to become our Founding Head of School.

So, we are proud to introduce you to Adrienne I. Miller and hope that you will have a chance to meet her in person very soon. We are now confident that, with your support, the Karuna School will open its doors in September, 2013!

Love and blessings,

Prajna and Ted

Message from new Head of School, Adrienne I. Miller

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake…
⎯Henry David Thoreau

With great pleasure and profound determination, I welcome the opportunity to join so many other, committed individuals in building the Karuna School. There is no clearer moment, no greater need nor far-reaching demand than that of educating children to create and lead lives of dynamic awareness and meaning as Thoreau so simply and clearly stated. This is the Karuna School mission by design, by strength and by purpose.
I am ready to take on the challenge of leading this endeavor into how best to teach what it means to be fully human and best educated. For the young people Karuna School will educate, we are all reawakened, and we will keep ourselves awake.

We increasingly understand the economic, ecological, and socio-political interdependence among peoples and nations. New and unknown changes in how we live and work demand that we examine and enhance how we serve young people. The strongest schools for the twenty-first century must provide a clear and lasting guide for both life and livelihood. It is my belief that the most important task of students during the high school years is to discover their unique gifts and passions, both intellectually and personally. To cultivate these talents, to find the ways in which they will employ them to best serve their communities and the world— this is the objective of a Karuna School education. In this way we will promote student agency and leadership.

It is my distinct hope that the Karuna School will create the possibility for young people to cultivate a deep awareness of themselves, their communities and the wider world. We will provide a foundation of skills and understanding that will lead our students to live happy and meaningful lives. I so look forward to exploring these basic tenets of the Karuna School community in our newsletters and communications to come. I would like to imagine that Thoreau had this in mind when he spoke of reawakening, and I believe that he would have welcomed the opportunity to attend the Karuna School.

In peace,
Adrienne I. Miller
Head of School