Engaging children. Supporting educators. Transforming schools.
Co-Founder and Executive Director, Programs
Megan Cowan received a BA in Comparative Health and Healing from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been practicing mindfulness since 1996 and working with children in various settings since 1999. She first brought these two passions together in 2001 when she expanded a mindfulness program from 15 to over 100 children and created mindfulness curriculum for monthly and summer programs. As a cofounder of Mindful Schools, Megan has taught mindfulness to over 2000 children and trained over 200 teachers. Megan also consults with families on how to incorporate and apply mindfulness to address a variety of struggles that families encounter and increase the happiness of households.
Her additional teaching experience includes teaching at a private school for mildly to severe physically and developmentally disabled children, tutoring children and adults in reading, and teaching English as a second language. In each of these contexts, she applied her knowledge of mindfulness to enhance her effectiveness.
Additionally, Megan has experience in the business world working as an office manager, bookkeeper or accountant for several companies. She has run the office of several small companies, set up books for start-ups, and is experienced in all areas of accounting for large companies.
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Executive Director, Operations
Randima (Randy) Fernando was a product manager for several award-winning projects over 7 years at NVIDIA Corporation (Forbes Magazine’s 2007 Company of the Year), where he also served as an inaugural member of the employee-run NVIDIA Foundation Board.
He has successfully managed large projects with over 100 people and has worked on all aspects of product development, from technical aspects to public relations and marketing. He has published three highly acclaimed books (two of which held the #1 spot on Barnes & Noble’s “Graphics Programming” list for most of 2003 and 2004), written several papers, and given numerous presentations on real-time computer graphics. (Full Resume)
Randy is from Sri Lanka, grew up in the Philippines, and attended Cornell University, where he received his BS in Computer Science and MS in Computer Graphics. Randy was drawn to Mindful Schools because of the program’s compelling results and preventive nature, and he is excited to combine best practices from Silicon Valley with the sincere core values and intentions of the Mindful Schools team. Randy learned mindfulness as a child, and has been practicing it formally since 2004.
Director of Training
Kate Janke started studying mindfulness in 2004 and began teaching it in 2008 at venues around the Bay Area. Her passion for bringing the tools of mindfulness to youth started in 2008 when she began developing programs for young adults, primarily in Berkeley and San Francisco. Kate began working for Mindful Schools as a mindfulness teacher and event coordinator in the fall of 2008. She has taught mindfulness to about 1,000 children in Oakland and finds working in schools deeply fulfilling and invigorating.
Kate is now coupling her mindfulness teaching with her past occupational experience, the course coordinator for an internationally recognized online program, as the Director of Training. She has recently developed a multi level mindfulness training program that will be launched in 2010. In addition, she is also the volunteer coordinator and works closely with the scaling team to develop programs and trainings in new remote locations.
Training Coordinator
Christina Costelo received her MA in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her BA in Psychology from San Francisco State University. With a passion in progressive and innovative learning environments, Christina has worked in education for 9 years in a variety of settings. Most recently, she worked as a Camp Director for 3 years for Camp Galileo during the summer and an afterschool program quality assessor for OUSD during the school year. She has also worked as a Program Director for a nonprofit afterschool program funded by No Child Left Behind where she managed academic programming and wrote extensive guided reading curricula for elementary and middle school students in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Mountain View.
The role of Training Coordinator has allowed Christina to bring her love of connecting to people and her project management experience to a mission she feels strongly about. She has cultivated her own mindfulness practice since joining the team.
Professor Emeritus University of California, Davis
Environmentalist and Filmmaker Board Member, Friends of the Earth
Entrepreneur (Non-Profit and For-Profit) Former White House Fellow
Former President & Chief Executive Officer Asha for Education
Co-Founder Mindful Schools
Co-Founder Executive Director, Programs Mindful Schools
Executive Director, Operations Mindful Schools
Marriage and Family Therapist Kaiser Website
Founder, Mindfulness Research Guide Researcher, Preventive and Behavioral Medicine Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior University of California Los Angeles Website
Assistant Professor of Social Psychology and Health Psychology Department of Psychology Virginia Commonwealth University Website
Research Scientist University of Oregon Website
Professor of Business University of California, Davis Website
Director of the Initiative on Contemplation and Education Garrison Institute Website
Research Assistant Professor of Human Development, Prevention Research Center Pennsylvania State University Website
Associate Professor Montclair University Website
Assistant Professor Department of Education Stanford University Website
Research Analyst SRI International Website
Maureen O'Brien (Previous Version) Chris Clifford (Previous Version)
Zachary Cincotta
Lou Giampa
Emily Taylor
djovida
Anna Bullard (Current) Jenny Liu Trupti Glaubman Sarah Tariq
Kevin Bjorke
...And so many more who have contributed on smaller projects! We are extremely grateful to all our volunteers for their kind and enthusiastic support.
Please contact us if you'd like to volunteer.