Keynote Speakers

Title: "What Can We Do? Contributing In a Troubling Time to a Troubled World." Roger Walsh MD., Ph.D. DHL is a professor of psychiatry, philosophy, anthropology, and religious studies at the University of California. His personal and research interests include contemplative practices, psychological wellbeing, capacities such as love and wisdom, and our contemporary global challenges. His books include Essential Spirituality, Paths Beyond Ego, and The World of Shamanism, and his work has received over twenty national and international awards. In a former incarnation, he was a circus acrobat and world record high diver, and he recently had an extremely brief and unsuccessful career as a standup comedian. For more, see www.drrogerwalsh.com

Title: "Horizons of 21st Century Transpersonal Psychology" Jorge N. Ferrer, Ph.D. is professor of Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco. Formerly the chair of the East-West Psychology department, he is the author of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality and Participation and the Mystery: Transpersonal Essays in Psychology, Education, and Religion, as well as co-editor of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies. In 2009, he served as advisor to the organization Religions for Peace at the United Nations on a research project aimed at solving global interreligious conflict. He was born in Barcelona, Spain.

Title: "How did it happen, where are we now, and where can we get to?" James Fadiman was one of the founding group that established the Transpersonal Journal and Association. He assisted Robert Frager in founding the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sofia University). He filled in for Maslow for a year at Brandeis and taught at San Francisco State and Stanford. He had his own consulting firm, written 10+ books, and was involved with early psychedelic research and is currently a pioneer in microdose studies. He has written (with Jordan Gruber) Healthy Selves, a book on personal multiplicity that upends some of psychology’s most basic suppositions.

Title: "The Long Body: Connecting Science and Spirituality" Marilyn Schlitz, whose transformational work helps redefine death and transforms our fears into inspirations for living and dying well. She also helps to identify and develop personal and interpersonal skills and capacities needed by 21st century leadership.

Title: "MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD: Phase 3, FDA approval and Beyond" Rick Doblin, Ph.D., is the founder, in 1986, and Executive Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He received his doctorate in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he wrote his dissertation on the regulation of the medical uses of psychedelics and marijuana His undergraduate thesis at New College of Florida was a 25-year follow-up to the classic Good Friday Experiment. Rick studied with Dr. Stanislav and Christina Grof and was among the first to be certified as a Holotropic Breathwork practitioner. His professional goal is to eventually to become a legally licensed psychedelic therapist.

Title: "Essential Discernments for the Road Ahead"Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, E-RYT 500, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and the author of eight books in the fields of psychology and spirituality that have been translated in more than a dozen languages, including the Yoga & Psyche: Integrating the Paths of Yoga and Psychology for Healing, Transformation, and Joy, Halfway Up the Mountain: the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment, Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path, and The Guru Question. She has been teaching workshops and trainings in universities, major retreat centers around the world, online, and in yoga studios since 1997. Dr. Caplan also developed innovative programs as a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Naropa University, John F. Kennedy University, and Sophia University, and she is the founder of the Yoga & Psyche Method and the Yoga & Psyche Conference.

Title: "Transpersonal Research: Opportunities and Challenges" Harris Friedman is retired Research Professor of Counseling Psychology at University of Florida, now supervising dissertations at both the California Institute of Integral Studies and Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK, and will be Visiting Scholar at Harvard University next academic year. He frequently publishes on transpersonal, as well as on mainstream psychological and related social-science, topics. He is both a clinical- and organizational-psychology practitioner, as well as serves as Associate Editor of two humanistic psychology journals, Senior Editor of the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, and as co-president of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology.