Jan Booth MA, RN, has worked as a nurse for many years at the intersection of quality of life and end of life, as a hospice/palliative care nurse and as an end-of-life coach and educator. She serves as faculty for the International Nurse Coach Association and the Conscious Dying Institute, and is the author of Re-Imagining the End-of-Life: Self-Development & Reflective Practices for Nurse Coaches.
Tashel C. Bordere, PhD, CT, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science and State Extensions Specialist (Youth Development), at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is also a Forward Promise Fellow and certified thanatologist. She publishes works relating to diversity and resilience through loss, including a co-edited book, Handbook of Social Justice in Loss and Grief. Her research areas include African American youth grief and adjustment to loss (homicide, race-based trauma), and she also developed S.H.E.D. Loss and Grief Tools.
Leslie Blackhall, MD, is Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Humanities at the University of Virginia Medical Center and Director of its Palliative Care Services. She also earned a masters in theology at Harvard Divinity School, with a concentration in biomedical ethics, history and philosophy.
Rev. Kat Kowalski, MDiv, BCC, the Neonatal ICU Chaplain at Johns Hopkins, spearheads that hospital’s perinatal palliative care program. Kat often works with parents who have received a worrisome prenatal diagnosis and has ministered to countless families experiencing the serious illness and/or death of a baby.
Karen Wyatt, MD, bestselling author of 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and host of the End-of-Life University Podcast, which features conversations with experts who work in all aspects of end-of-life care, is widely regarded as a thought-leader in the movement to transform care for the dying in the U.S. It is her firm conviction that in order to live life fully we must each overcome our fear of death and embrace the difficulties that life brings us.
Anthony P. Bossis, PhD, is director of palliative care, co-principal investigator, and a session guide for the NYU psilocybin cancer anxiety study, an FDA approved clinical trial investigating the efficacy of a psilocybin-facilitated mystical experience on the existential and psycho-spiritual distress in persons with cancer. He is also project director for the NYU study investigating the effects of a psilocybin-facilitated mystical experience upon religious leaders and professionals.
Rev. Olivia Bareham, a certified death midwife, home funeral guide and celebrant with degrees in Education, Natural Theology and Sacred Healing, is founder of Sacred Crossings—The Institute for Conscious Dying and Home Funerals in Los Angeles. She has 12+ years’ experience guiding hundreds of families in the art of conscious dying and home-based after-death care and recently launched an alternative funeral home owned and operated entirely by death midwives offering natural, sacred alternatives to traditional funeral home practices. Olivia also facilitates a certificate training program, ‘The Art of Death Midwifery,’ now offered to students worldwide.
Frank Ostaseski is an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and visionary cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, and founder of the Metta Institute. He has lectured at Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, Google and teaches at major spiritual centers around the globe. Frank is the 2018 recipient of the prestigious Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. His groundbreaking work has been featured on the Bill Moyers PBS series On Our Own Terms, highlighted on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and honored by H.H. the Dalai Lama. He is the author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully.
Alua Arthur is a death doula and attorney. As the founder of Going with Grace, she and her team support others through the mysteries, practicalities, emotions and spiritual considerations at the end of life. Alua also trains death doulas and those committed to shifting the cultural conversation about death.
