Universe Speaks Council

Bayo Akomolafe, co-host

Bayo Akomolafe is rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia).

Lama Willa Blythe Baker

Lama Willa is the Founding Teacher and Spiritual Co-Director of Natural Dharma Fellowship in Boston, MA, and its retreat center Wonderwell Mountain Refuge in Springfield, NH. She was authorized as a dharma teacher and lineage holder in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism and holds a doctorate from Harvard University. She is a contemplative faculty member for many organizations, a member of the first Council on the Uncertain Human Future and sits on the advisory board for One Earth Sangha. She writes, teaches, guides meditation retreats, and supports cultivating a deep meditation practice in daily life; her teaching interests include the wisdom of the body, eco-dharma, non-dual awareness, and compassion. Her most recent book is The Wakeful Body (2021).

Sarah Buie, convener

Sarah Buie is a designer / educator who encourages collective awakening to / presence with our oneness with the Earth and the flow of life. She is Founding Convener of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future and the campus-wide curriculum initiative A new Earth conversation at Clark University (both funded by the Christopher Reynolds Foundation). Sarah is Professor Emerita and Research Scholar at Clark, where she served as Director of the Higgins School of Humanities and its Difficult Dialogues initiative. She was also an award-winning museum exhibition designer for twenty-five years, and has taught and written on sacred space, with spatial archetypes as a guide to holistic understanding of our interdependent relationship with the living planet.

Orland Bishop

Orland Bishop is a visionary healer and community leader based in Los Angeles. He is renowned for his transformative approach to peace-building and youth mentorship, which blends spiritual wisdom, indigenous knowledge and contemporary psychology to address social and individual trauma. Drawing on his extensive studies of medicine, naturopathy, and traditions of South and West Africa, he approachs social healing and connection as a pathway to collective liberation. He is founder and director of the ShadeTree Foundation, a Los Angeles-based community of elders, teachers, artists, and mentors that advocates for the healthy development of children and youth. In addition to his work with ShadeTree, he has counseled human rights advocacy organizations across the world, and is the author of a spiritual memoir, The Seventh Shrine: Meditations on the African Spiritual Journey: From the Middle Passage to the Mountaintop.

Tiokasin Ghosthorse

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Itazipcola and Mnicoujou Lakota of the Sakowin Oyate, and draws upon the language, history, culture, philosophy, and traditions of the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. A survivor of the “Reign of Terror” from 1972 to 1976 on the Lakota Reservations in South Dakota and the US Bureau of Indian Affairs Boarding and Church Missionary School systems designed to “kill the Indian and save the man,” Tiokasin has a long history of Indigenous activism and advocacy. He spoke as a 15-year-old at the United Nations in Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Tiokasin was a 2016 Nominee for a Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host, and Executive Producer of First Voices Radio syndicated to over 120 public, community, and commercial radio stations in the US and Canada. Additionally, he is a master musician known for performing worldwide in over 50 countries. Tiokasin is also a co-author of the forthcoming Earth Mind and published Butterfly Against the Wind. He describes himself as “a perfectly flawed human being” and is most importantly, a Sundancer in the cosmology of the Lakota Nation.

Manish Jain

Manish Jain is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems, cultural imaginations and inter-cultural dialogue. Inspired by the lineage of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Ivan Illich, his illiterate village grandmother, his unschooled daughter, local indigenous communities and the Jain spiritual philosophy, he is one of the leading planetary voices for deschooling our lives and reimagining education. He has served for the past 25 years as Chief Beaver (ecosystems builder) of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur, India and is co-founder of some of the most innovative educational experiments in the world – the Swaraj University, the Jail University, Complexity University, Tribal Farmversity, the Creativity Adda, the Learning Societies Unconference, the Walkouts-Walk-on network, Udaipur as a Learning City, the Families Learning Together network, Berkana Exchange. Manish worked as one of the principal team members of the UNESCO Learning Without Frontiers global initiative in Paris Headquarters, and has been a consultant to UNICEF, World Bank, USAID in Africa, South Asia and former Soviet Union.

Sará King

Dr. Sará King is a contemplative neuroscientist, artist, political and learning scientist, education philosopher, social impact entrepreneur, public speaker and meditation teacher. She is passionate about catalyzing humanity’s capacity to heal from intergenerational trauma and dedicated to creating accessible contemplative practices at the nexus of art, music, and meditation. She is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Public Health at the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion in Human Health and Social Justice at UCSD. She is also the CEO and founder of MindHeart AI, an artificial intelligence start-up specializing in building platforms, software, and tools grounded in neuroscience, healing and well-being. She is the author of “The Science of Social Justice” framework for research and facilitation and the inventor of the “Systems Based Awareness Map” (SBAM) – the world’s first theoretical map of human awareness—which she developed to explore our capacity to heal intergenerational trauma and promote the well-being of “collective nervous systems”.

Pat McCabe

Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) is a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace, and her paintings are created as tools for individual, earth and global healing. She draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance, and is devoted to supporting the next generations, Women’s Nation and Men’s Nation, in being functional members of the “Hoop of Life” and upholding the honor of being human. Her primary work now is the reconciliation between the masculine and feminine, Men’s Nation and Women’s Nation; remembering, recreating or creating anew a narrative for the Sacred Masculine; and addressing the Archetypal Wounding that occurred in our misunderstanding and abuse of technology in prayer, ceremony and science.

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