Healing-Centered Futures:
Education, Business, and Technology Summit
October 3rd & 4th, 2025 | ONLINE
How might healing-centered principles guide the future of education, business, and technology?
Over the course of two days, we will engage in contemplative practice, dialogue, and collaborative inquiry. Together, we will explore:
- Education models and practices that center well-being, belonging, and justice
- Healing-centered and regenerative approaches to business rooted in care, sustainability, and social impact
- The ethical and transformative use of artificial intelligence as a force for good and community transformation
Why Attend?
- Explore the future of education, business, and technology through a healing-centered lens, engaging in dynamic conversations and hands-on workshops that translate visionary ideas into actionable strategies.
- Connect with a vibrant community of leaders, educators, entrepreneurs, and technologists committed to building equitable, purpose-driven, and human-centered futures.
- Learn from pioneering research, case studies, and real-world applications that demonstrate how healing-centered practices can drive innovation, resilience, and systemic change.
This summit is an invitation to pause, reflect, and seed the futures we long for. We welcome you to join a community committed to building worlds where resilience, imagination, and humanity remain at the center.
AGENDA
Day 1 – Friday, October 3
11:00 AM – 11:30 AM ET
Opening & Welcome
Angel Acosta, Maria Tan, Drisana McDaniel, Sará King and Kierstin Grey – Welcoming remarks
11:30 AM – 1:30 PM ET
Superintelligence for What?
Dr. Angel Acosta – Exploring the ethical, ecological, and emotional questions behind AI in the post-truth era
Quantum Methodological Leaps & Transcultural Universes
Samar Younes – Reimagining creativity across boundaries of identity, culture, and imagination
Cultural Geography & Our Collective Liberation
Musa Murchison – Examines how geography, culture, and place shape our path to collective liberation, rooting healing in belonging and environment
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM ET
Symbiotic Creativity & the Post-Industrial Economy
Vincent Hunt – Designing human-AI partnerships grounded in ethics and imagination
Community Adaptation & Resilience in the Face of Exponential Technologies
Rose Genele – Exploring futures-oriented systems thinking and community foresight
4:15 PM – 6:00 PM ET
Circle Reflection & Community Networking
Facilitated integration and short shares from the collective
Day 2 – Saturday, October 4
11:00 AM – 12:15 PM ET
Sensuous Knowledge in Times of Enclosure
Minna Salami and Angel Acosta – Explore sensuous knowledge as a way of knowing, inviting us to reimagine wisdom, embodiment, and liberation in of uncertainty
12:30 PM – 1:45 PM ET
Building Liberatory Technologies
Dr. Sará King & Kierstin Gray – Explore intergenerational healing, art, and technology
2:00 PM – 3:15 PM ET
Healing-Centered Education in Times of Overwhelm
Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Arlené Casimir & Dr. Justis Lopez – Share practices for cultivating racial literacy, resilience, and collective care to sustain education in times of crisis
3:30 PM – 4:45 PM ET
Business as Ceremony
Clarinda Tivoli – Reveals how business can be practiced as a living ceremony and act of sovereignty
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET
Closing Ceremony & Fortitude and Discernment in Times of Change
Maria Tan, Angel Acosta, and Drisana McDaniel – Invite the community to integrate, reflect, and envision pathways forward
Speakers
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.
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 facilitator, educator, writer, and co-founder of the Transformative Teaching Collective. Through her project The Alchemy of Now, she focuses on embodiment, social justice, and psychospirituality. She serves as a senior researcher at the Acosta Institute while pursuing a Ph.D. in Women’s Spirituality.
Dr. Sará King
Dr. Sará King is a neuroscientist, medical anthropologist, entrepreneur, and yoga/meditation teacher. A global thought leader at the intersection of art, mindfulness, and social justice, she has held fellowships with the Garrison Institute and Mobius and is part of Google’s Vitality Labs think tank.
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.
Dr. Justis Lopez
Dr. Justis Lopez is an educator, organizer, and cultural strategist. He supports students, educators, and communities with leadership development, culturally sustaining practices, and joyful, creative pedagogy aimed at communal and self-actualization.
Clarinda Tivoli
Clarinda Tivoli is a Pacific Island entrepreneur and founder of Ever Uvi Community. She redefines business as ceremony, blending Indigenous story-keeping with sustainable, community-centered growth. Her work uplifts cultural continuity, intergenerational wealth, and transformative justice.
Musa Murchison
Artist and cultural geographer with 15 years of expertise in ethnographic research, transmedia storytelling, and experience design, Musa explores work and workplace as pathways for personal and communal actualization. As Managing Partner at Oratory Glory and co-founder of HOLI., they craft immersive narratives and strategies that reimagine equitable futures through participatory, justice-centered media and place-based practices.
Samar Younes
A Beirut-born hybrid artist and “cultural hacker,” Samar pioneers Quantum Craft™, a practice that fuses ancestral, artisanal, and artificial intelligence into transcultural frameworks for post-disciplinary futures. Through creative strategy, narrative environments, and the IMAGINALOGY Quantum Craft Lab, they cultivate living archives where tradition and innovation converge to reimagine identity, memory, and collective liberation.
Minna Salami
A Nigerian-Finnish-Swedish feminist author, Minna is a social critic and thought leader in Black feminist theory and African philosophy. Her books—Can Feminism Be African? and Sensuous Knowledge—and her award-winning MsAfropolitan platform invite global audiences to reimagine knowledge, sensuality, and futures beyond colonial scripts. She speaks globally on feminist thought, decolonial epistemologies, and the politics of knowledge production.
Rose Genele
Rose Genele is an award-winning AI ethics advocate and futurist, founder of The Opening Door, specializing in human-centered innovation and strategic foresight. She supports leaders, organizations, and investors in responsible AI design and futures thinking—enabling collaborative, ethical, and sustainable technology systems. Rose’s work is grounded in inclusion, human–machine collaboration, and the long-view of justice and innovation in a rapidly evolving world.
Vincent Hunt
An entrepreneurial creative and facilitator at The Bureau of Creative Intelligence, Vincent explores how AI, creativity, and leadership intersect. He supports organizations in navigating transformation with human-centered innovation, anchoring future-forward design in ethics, imagination, and collaborative flourishing.
Kierstin Gray
Kierstin Gray is a healing-centered educator and technologist who co-develops justice-rooted frameworks for technology and learning. Partnering with Dr. Sará King, she helps craft liberatory methodologies that reweave neural, algorithmic, and social systems into tools aligned with collective healing and transformative justice.
