2025
International Healing-Centered Education Conference
Fortitude & Discernment in Times of Disruption
December 13th–14th, 2025
This Year’s Program Will Help You:
- Navigate Disruption with Clarity — Develop discernment practices to guide meaningful action amidst instability.
- Recover and Renew — Build the nimbleness to be stretched, and practice renewal through joy and restoration.
- Balance Speed and Stillness — Recognize when to slow down and when to act quickly in service of what truly matters.
- Work with Complexity — Learn to discern between oversimplification and the need to deepen your capacity to hold what’s multifaceted.
- Deepen Interdependence — Turn toward collective wisdom, shared learning, and trust-building as anchors for transformative change.
Conference Agenda
Day 1 – Saturday, December 13th, 2025
1:30 PM – 2:00 PM ET – Opening & Framing Fortitude and Discernment
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM ET – Session 1 — Listening Deeply, Teaching Boldly: Self, Story, and Systems in Healing-Centered Education
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET – Session 2: Deep Wisdom & Discernment for Cultivating Presence
Day 2 – Sunday, December 14th, 2025
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET – Practice & Integration & Community Building
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM ET – Session 3: Healing, Leadership & Vitality in Times of Transformation
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM ET – Practice & Integration & Community Building
4:30 PM – 6:00 PM ET – Closing Session 4 – Navigating Uncertainty as Embodied Capacity-Building
What to Expect
Over the course of two days, participants will engage in:
- Keynote Conversations with leading voices in healing-centered practice, organizational change, education, and social innovation.
- Interactive Workshops rooted in somatic, relational, and reflective practices.
- Dialogue Spaces for exploring paradox, complexity, and the wisdom of multiple perspectives.
- Community Rituals that restore aliveness, joy, and imagination as essential leadership capacities.
You’ll leave this gathering with:
-
Practical tools to navigate disruption with grounded clarity.
-
Somatic and relational practices to sustain purpose, vitality, and connection.
-
A renewed sense of possibility for yourself, your work, and your community.
Together, we will create a space that balances reflection with action, honoring both the inner work of self-examination and the outer work of leading change in our organizations and communities.
Through dialogue, somatic practice, storytelling, and creative exploration, participants will engage directly with the principles of capacity building—discernment, aliveness, recovery, imagination, and more. This will be a living laboratory where ideas are tested, relationships are nurtured, and new ways of being emerge.
Speakers
Maria Tan
Maria Tan is a first-generation Filipino-American educator, facilitator, and program designer committed to fostering healing-centered learning environments. She is the founder of the House of Thriving, where she supports leaders and communities through restorative practices, somatic healing, and curriculum design. A former Bronx high school teacher, Maria draws on her lived experience of burnout and renewal to create transformative spaces that prioritize wellness, equity, and sustainable change
Drisana McDaniel
Drisana McDaniel is a healing-centered facilitator, writer, and transformation activist whose work explores embodiment, justice, and collective liberation. As co-founder of the Transformative Teaching Collective, she curates workshops and programs that integrate generative conflict, contemplative practice, and psychospiritual inquiry. Through her banner project, The Alchemy of Now, Drisana supports communities in aligning their inner and outer lives to create lasting change rooted in empathy, imagination, and interconnection.
Angel Acosta
Angel Acosta has worked for over a decade to bridge leadership, social justice, and contemplative practice. As the founder and Chair of the Acosta Institute, he designs learning experiences that integrate healing-centered education, organizational capacity-building, and contemplative approaches to leadership. A scholar, educator, and facilitator, Angel has supported schools, universities, nonprofits, and businesses in cultivating cultures of care, resilience, and innovation. His work helps leaders navigate disruption while remaining grounded in humanity, equity, and hope.
Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is an award-winning associate professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a leading voice on racial literacy and equity in education. She is the creator of the Archaeology of Self™ framework, which guides educators and leaders through deep self-reflection as a path toward justice and transformation. A sought-after speaker, poet, and author, Dr. Sealey-Ruiz brings over two decades of scholarship and practice to her work of cultivating classrooms and communities rooted in love, critical inquiry, and healing.
Joshua Abiazar
Joshua Abiazar (he/they) is a facilitator and cultural organizer committed to building spaces of belonging for marginalized communities. With a background in community organizing and DEI training, Joshua has facilitated equity-focused workshops across the U.S., centering Spanish-speaking and immigrant families. At the Acosta Institute, he contributes to program design and facilitation, weaving together tools, lived experiences, and restorative practices to nurture solidarity and healing in diverse contexts.
Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
Dr. Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu is a psychologist, educator, and author whose work bridges mindfulness, compassion, and cross-cultural understanding. Drawing from Japanese and American traditions, he has taught at Stanford University and around the world, helping individuals and organizations cultivate presence, balance, and leadership rooted in heart and spirit. His books, including From Mindfulness to Heartfulness, invite readers to integrate Eastern and Western wisdom traditions to live with authenticity and connection.
Mirabai Bush
Mirabai Bush is the founder of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. Under her
direction, The Center introduced contemplative practices into social work, social justice
activism, higher education, law, business, and environmental leadership. She worked closely
with a diverse board, cross-disciplinary working group, and an organically growing organization.
She developed the Search Inside Yourself program for Google. She has been teaching workshops
and courses on contemplative practice in life, work, and activism for 50 years.
Maggie Jackson
Maggie Jackson is an award-winning journalist, speaker, and author recognized for her insights on uncertainty, technology, and human resilience. Her books, including Distracted and Uncertain, explore how societies adapt—and sometimes falter—amid rapid change. With work published in The New York Times, Boston Globe, and other leading outlets, Maggie brings a clear-eyed, deeply researched perspective on how to navigate disruption with curiosity, discernment, and hope.
Mariah Rankine-Landers
Mariah Rankine-Landers is an artist, educator, and creative facilitator whose work lies at the intersection of imagination, healing, and social transformation. Through her art and teaching, she invites individuals and communities to explore identity, ancestry, and collective memory as pathways to resilience and renewal. Mariah is dedicated to creating spaces that nurture creativity and empower participants to reimagine what is possible in times of disruption and change.
Makeda Gershenson
Makēda Gershenson has spent the past decade exploring how we might reimagine futures worth inheriting. As founder of Mosaics in the Making and a researcher at the Acosta Institute, she facilitates research collaborations and sandbox sessions for online community spaces, creating containers where imagination and transformation meet. Currently pursuing a Master's in Futures Research in Berlin, Makēda works at the intersection of foresight, decolonial scholarship, and embodied practice—designing experiences that help individuals and organizations move from inherited constraints toward emergent possibilities. Her approaches integrate rigor with relevance, inquiry with artistry, and analysis with care. Whether facilitating workshops, conducting organizational research, or exploring how metaphor shapes our capacity to change, Makēda's werk invites us to notice the stories we inherit and to choose the futures we create together.
Dr. Justis Lopez
Dr. Justis Lopez is an experienced community organizer with a demonstrated history of working in the events services industry, K-12 & higher education. Skilled in student development, student leadership, event planning, culturally sustaining practices, and creative teaching pedagogy. Actively support students, university professionals, K-12 educators, and non - profit organizations towards the goal of communal & self-actualization.
