Presenters

Gina M. Biegel, MA, LMFT
Founder, Stressed Teens Program
Psychotherapist and Author

Gina M. Biegel, MA, LMFT, is a California-based psychotherapist currently in private practice in the Bay Area. She adapted the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program typically for adults for an adolescent population, and created the Stressed Teens, a program using the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Teens (MBSR-T) program. She conducts trainings, workshops and conferences on MBSR/MBSR-T with a variety of populations including professionals, teachers, parents, and teens in the U.S. and internationally. A more recent area of work is in bringing mindfulness into the California Elementary School system through her role as a member of the Research Advisory Board for Mindful Schools and assessed the effectiveness of such a program. Her first book, a workbook, entitled, The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens: Mindfulness Skills to Help You Deal With Stress, is currently available as well as her audio CD, Mindfulness for Teens: Meditation Practices to Reduce Stress and Promote Well-Being.

Megan Cowan
Co-Founder and Executive Director of Programs
Mindful Schools

Megan Cowan is Co-founder and Executive Director of Programs at Mindful Schools. Since 2007 Mindful Schools has provided training to more than 11,000 students in 40 schools and more than 2000 educators, other professionals, and parents. The Mindful Schools program teaches focus, self awareness, emotional regulation and empathy. Megan has been practicing mindfulness since 1996, and teaching mindfulness to children since 2001. Through the Mindful Schools program she has taught thousands of students and educators. She experiences great joy in offering these tools of awareness and compassion to young people, preparing them to influence peace in our world.

M. Lee Freedman, MD
Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
Co-Founder, Mindfulness Toronto
Founder, Mindful Families and School

Amy Garrett, PhD
Research Scientist Stanford University

Amy Garrett, PhD has used neuroimaging to study adolescent mood and anxiety disorders, including PTSD, bipolar disorder, and depression at the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry. Her goal is to understand how the brain is altered by psychiatric illness in the teen years, as well as the neural mechanisms of recovery from illness. Amy’s educational background includes a B.S. in engineering from the University of Illinois, a PhD in Neuroscience from Wake Forest University, and postdoctoral fellowships at UC Davis Department of Psychiatry and Stanford University Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research.

Sam Himelstein, PhD
Psychotherapist, Researcher, and Mindfulness Teacher

Sam Himelstein, PhD is the Executive Director of Engaging The Moment, LLC and provides individual, group, and family psychotherapy to high-risk and incarcerated adolescents at a non-profit organization in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently the Research Director at the Mind Body Awareness (MBA) Project, where he completed his doctoral dissertation titled, “A Mixed Methods Study of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention with Incarcerated Youth.” Dr. Himelstein is adjunct faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and facilitates workshops, trainings, and consultations related to mindfulness, working with at-risk youth, and research in non-profit agencies, government agencies, and academic institutions in the community.

Joe Klein, LPC, CSAC
Founder and President Inward Bound Mindfulness Education

Joe Klein is the founder of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme) which provides transformative retreats for teens and college students as well as for parents and professionals who work with youth. He has over 20 years’ experience working with youth as a teacher, counselor and soccer coach. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Certified Substance Abuse Counselor and a long term practitioner of mindfulness meditation, yoga and Chinese internal martial arts.

Mark Lilly
Yoga Therapist and Author
Founder, Street Yoga

For Mark Lilly, yoga is an everyday survival skill, a practice he has shared with thousands of youth as founder and president of Street Yoga, a Portland, OR based non-profit. He still lives with the tremors of traumas past, and realizes the delicate line between suffering and awakening. His teaching emphasizes cultivation of the best within each of us, the authentic stories and experiences that illuminate our being and drive our teaching to places of deep truthfulness. Mark has developed many special yoga curricula in addition to the core and advanced Street Yoga trainings, specialized work for young patients recovering from illness or injury in the hospital, for young people recovering from sexual abuse, and workshops for adults moving through entrenched traumas or grappling with high-intensity communication situations. Through it all, he brings a lightness and love to his teaching that is rooted in humility, grace and joy.

Chris McKenna
Mindfulness Teacher & Executive Director, Mind Body Awareness Project

Chris McKenna is the Executive Director of the Mind Body Awareness Project, an Oakland-based nonprofit that has pioneered the development of mindfulness-based interventions for at-risk youth. He manages the delivery of mindfulness-based rehabilitation programs in six different juvenile detention facilities and two aftercare sites in four different counties in California. In collaboration with Oakland Children’s Hospital, he is currently implementing a program which utilizes MBA’s curriculum as a formal medical prescription for anxiety and insomnia for youth in the probation system. He is also working with Stanford Medical School to measure the effects of retreat-style mindfulness practice for youth in long-term detention.

Amy Saltzman, MD
Mindfulness Teacher & Holistic Physician
Creator and Director: Still Quiet Place
Co-founder and Director: Association for Mindfulness in Education

Dr. Amy Saltzman is a holistic physician, mindfulness teacher, scientist, wife, mother, and devoted student of transformation. Her passion is supporting people of all ages in enhancing their well being, and discovering the Still Quiet Place within. She is recognized by her peers as a visionary and pioneer in the fields of holistic medicine and mindfulness in K-12 education. Dr. Saltzman is the founder and director of the Association for Mindfulness in Education, and a founding member of the Northern California Advisory Committee on Mindfulness. She has conducted research studies evaluating the benefits of teaching mindfulness to child-parent pairs, and to children in low-income elementary schools. She offers presentations and courses for young children, teens, parents, educators, and health care professionals. Dr. Saltzman also has a private practice in Menlo Park, CA , where she provides holistic medical care and individual mindfulness instruction to children, teens and adults. www.stillquietplace.com

Randye Semple, PhD
Clinical Psychologist and Author
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Anxious Children

Randye J. Semple, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. She teaches and provides clinical supervision to psychiatric residents and psychology graduate students at LAC+USC Medical Center in Los Angeles. She is a licensed clinical psychologist in the states of New York and California; an Associate Editor of the journal “Mindfulness;” and a Past President of the Mindfulness and Acceptance special interest group of the Association for Behavior and Cognitive Therapies. Dr. Semple’s research focuses on the development and integration of mindfulness-based interventions for treatment of childhood anxiety. She has presented at national and international conventions and published scientific papers on this topic. She is the co-developer of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Children (MBCT-C), a 12-session psychotherapy for anxious children.