Maia Duerr has been part of the BPF community since 1999, first as the associate editor of Turning Wheel until 2002, then as a board member from 2003-2004, then as executive director from 2004-2007. She is committed to exploring the intersection of social change and dharma practice, and engaged in her first civil disobedience during a March 2003 action at the Westover Air Base in Chicopee, MA, at the start of the Iraq war.

A Buddhist practitioner since 1993, Maia received lay ordination from Roshi Joan Halifax into the Order of Interbeing and the Zen Peacemaker Order. She is currently a student in the Soto Zen lineage of Suzuki Roshi, and has lived and practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center. She has also been involved with Thich Nhat Hanh's Community of Mindful Living and served as the managing editor of The Mindfulness Bell from 1996-1997.

From 2002-2004, Maia was the Research Director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she led a study on the use of meditation and other contemplative practices in the workplace. She is the author of "The Contemplative Organization," published in the February 2004 issue of the Journal of Organizational Change Management.

Maia received an MA in cultural anthropology from the California Institute of integral Studies in 1996, and considers qualitative research another form of dharma practice. Earlier in her professional life, she worked as a music therapist and mental health counselor and was active in advocating for the rights of people with psychiatric disabilities. Her essay on these experiences, "Impossible Choices," is included in Not Turning Away, the Turning Wheel anthology published in 2004.

510-655-6169 ext. 310

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