Jan Dworkin, PhD is a certified Process Worker living in Portland Oregon. One of Arny Mindell’s original students, Jan is a pioneer and co-creator of Process Work theory and practice. She has been developing, researching and refining process work for over twenty years. She serves as Dean of Students for the Process Work Institute’s degree programs and is a senior faculty member of the Diploma program in Process Work as well as the Masters in Conflict Facilitation. She has co-founded and co-authored various Process Work training programs both in the U.S.A. and abroad. She is a co-founder of the Process Work Institute in Portland and the Global Process Institute.

She works as a teacher, therapist and group facilitator and conducts training workshops and public seminars internationally. In her private practice, areas of special expertise include relationship work, sexuality, addictions, eating disorders, creativity and awareness training for athletes.

Jan has been passionate about Worldwork and Conflict Resolution since Arny Mindell’s early experiments with group work in Zurich in the mid 1980s. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled, Group Process Work: A Stage for Personal and Global Development, was completed in 1989 and was one of the first texts written on that theme. She has since written a number of articles on the subject and worked on many conflict resolution projects, town meetings and Worldwork trainings over the last fifteen years.

www.jandworkin.com

Our guest on Pathways today is David Rynick, author of the new book, This Truth Never Fails, A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons. David is a Zen teacher authorized in two lineages, a Korean Linji lineage and Japanese Soto one. He’s a founding teacher of Boundless Way Zen, a rapidly expanding national network of Zen groups. Since 1991 Rynick has worked as a life and leadership coach as part of the International Coaching Federation and through the Coaches Training Institute. He provides faith-based coaching to individuals and peer coaching for clergy from diverse faiths. He has created and led numerous professional workshops and classes on leadership, systems thinking, coaching, meditation, diversity, and creativity, and has served as a faculty member at Cambridge College and the president of his Universalist Unitarian church. A former professional potter and improvisational dancer, he is also an avid landscape gardener as well as licensed as a Certified Maine Kayak Guide. Rynick holds a B.A. and an M.A.L.S. from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. He is the resident teacher of the Boundless Way Zen Temple in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife, also a Zen teacher

Our guest on Pathways today is historian and author, Thai Jones. Thai is familiar with protest and its consequences. Born while his parents were fugitives from justice, he went by a series of aliases until the age of four. His first book, A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience, was a personal exploration of the history behind the experience. His new book is More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York's Year of Anarchy, and it stems from his PhD work at Columbia University. Formerly a reporter for Newsday, he has written for a variety of national publications, ranging from the New York Times to Monthly Review. A graduate of Vassar College and the Columbia Journalism School, he lives in New York City.

Michelle’s “keeping it real” personality and entrepreneur style has been described as vivacious, committed as a catalyst able to see beyond reality, a wordsmith wizard, and a playful connector and leader. She can often be found goofing with her sweet-love son, dancing, or gratefully working with amazing everyday visionaries dedicated to an integrated and kind world. Yet don’t let her spunk and business mindedness distract you from her focused devotion to cultivating awareness around what she calls our super powers of acceptance, curiosity, and connection as the elixir of youth, health, and living wholeheartedly.

Her current creative ventures are Brain Circus; a community festive-ALL premiering in Portland in 2012, which offers play based learning for adults, brain science, and local community based businesses, and Divine Deviants; a women’s collaborative business supportive of the storytelling and promotion of the everyday unsung hero and grassroots philanthropy.

She’s played in many sandboxes of the working world, mostly within practices or businesses that help heal or transform the bodies, minds, and spirits of individuals or groups. Oh, and there were also those stints as a restorer of a lighthouse ship and Head Fudgemaker as well.