To go to the main description page for the Deeptime Leadership Program 2023-2024, click here.
Leadership Team 2023-2024 :
Director, Deeptime Leadership Program
Stephan Martin is an astronomer, educator, and author who has taught astronomy, physics, and consciousness studies at colleges, universities, and learning centers across the US for over twenty-five years. Between 2003-2008 he studied directly with Brian Swimme and others at the California Institute of Integral Studies, out of which came his first book Cosmic Conversations, in which he held dialogues with scientists, spiritual teachers, and cultural creatives on the nature of the universe and our role in it. Since then he has led workshops on the New Cosmology at seminars and retreat centers across the US and Europe and has been active in exploring multidisciplinary approaches to exploring the universe. He is currently adjunct faculty in the Consciousness and Transformative Studies graduate program at John F Kennedy University where he teaches a course on “Cosmology and Consciousness.” Steve is also a co-director of the continuing care program at the Center for Spiritual Emergence in Asheville, NC where he assists clients in living more conscious lives from an expansive perspective.
President, Deeptime Network
Jennifer Morgan, president and founder of the Deeptime Network, is an award-winning author, storyteller, and educator inspired by the work of Teilhard de Chardin, Maria Montessori, Thomas Berry, and Brian Swimme. Her Universe Story Trilogy — Born With a Bang, From Lava to Life, and Mammals Who Morph — are used in classrooms around the world, particularly in Montessori schools as part of the Cosmic Education Curriculum, and have received the Teachers Choice Award, Nautilus Semi Finalist, highest ratings from AAAS and endorsements from Jane Goodall, Neil de Grasse Tyson, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme and others. She is Vice President of the American Teilhard Association. Her life inspiration is to foster emergence by helping to link a planetary nervous system of people immersed in this radical new understanding.
Coherence Guide
Penny Andrews, D.Min, MA, has had a lifelong interest in spirituality, creativity and consciousness as paths to intuition and deeper knowing. This passion led to the study of forms of art as meditation at the University of Creation Spirituality. She is an ordained interfaith minister, and during her career as a hospital chaplain applied a variety of healing modalities in her work with patients and family caregivers of all spiritual backgrounds. A retreat leader and Earth activist, Penny been actively involved in Creation Spirituality, The Work that Reconnects, the Earth Charter and DeepTime studies. Currently, she guides a weekly Work that Reconnects meditation, offers a monthly webinar with Gail Ransom called Creation in Crisis, serves on the board of directors of Creation Spirituality Communities, is a regular speaker at a local Unitarian Universalist congregation, and provides spiritual companioning for others. She is co-creating a food forest on the drumlin in Wisconsin where she has lived for 30 years. She’s a certified Deeptime Leader with the Deeptime Network.
Emergence Mentor
Lisa Verni, LCSW, is a seasoned psychotherapist, deeptime consultant, writer, artist, and dancer who loves helping people live their authentic lives through alignment with the Universe. Stephan Martin sees her as a ‘cosmic lamplighter’ because of her particular gift of reflecting back people’s radiant energy to develop their allurements. Lisa holds degrees in Business/Marketing and Clinical Social Work from NYU, and is a Certified Deeptime Leader. In completing her Emergence Project, Lisa created an artistic and therapeutic offering called “Dancing with the Pain”. It is meant to inspire hope and understanding through the embodiment and expression of a Deeptime Perspective. It can be found at www.dancingwiththepain.org. Lisa lectures on topics such as ‘Applying A Deeptime Perspective to Psychotherapy’ and ‘On Creative Process’, and will be joining us throughout the program to share her Emergences. Please feel free to contact her directly at lisaverni@comcast.net for mentoring and Deeptime Conversation.
Tech Support and Adjunct Faculty
Gerardo López-Amaro joins us from Mexico where he engages in activist scholarship around Buen Vivir, ecopedagogies and practices of re-existence. He explores ways to highlight the experiments to co-create viable alternatives to the current system and address the global challenges of our times. He is a PhD candidate in Anthropology and Social Change by the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) of San Francisco, where he wonders about the possibilities for the emergence of the pluriverse even in dense liberal societies learning with grassroots movements. He is also part of the Steering Committee of the Ecoversities Alliance.
Confirmed Faculty for “Introducing the New Cosmology”
(Deeptime Leadership Program Module 1)
Sarbmeet Kanwal, PhD is an award-winning educator and a pioneer in novel ways of teaching quantum physics and astronomy. He holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the California Institute of Technology. His aptitude for explaining intricate scientific concepts in everyday language, has made him a sought after speaker among both science and non-science communities. He is the presenere of a TEDx talk on our new cosmic story, titled Chaos to Cosmos. Sarbmeet is a follower of the Sikh religion and a long time board member of the Monmouth Center for World Religions and Ethical Thought where he helped initiate several interfaith projects including the co-founding of an award winning youth leadership program called MOSAIC. In the last two years he has been assisting with instruction for Deeptime Network courses.
Brian Thomas Swimme is a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon in 1978 for work in gravitational dynamics. He brings the context of story to our understanding of the 13.7 billion year trajectory of cosmogenesis. Such a story, he feels, will assist in the emergence of a flourishing Earth community. Swimme is the author of The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos and The Universe is a Green Dragon. He is co-author of The Universe Story, which is the result of a 10 year collaboration with cultural historian, Thomas Berry. Swimme is also the creator of three educational video series: Canticle to the Cosmos (1990), The Earth’s Imagination (1998), and The Powers of the Universe (2004). He lectures widely and has presented at conferences sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The World Bank, UNESCO, The United Nations Millennium Peace Summit, and the American Museum of Natural History. Most recently he hosted and co-wrote, with Mary Evelyn Tucker, the 60 minute film Journey of the Universe, broadcast on PBS television stations nationwide. Journey of the Universe won the Northern California regional Emmy for Best Documentary, 2011. The Journey of the Universe book, ebook and ed series are published by and available from Yale University Press.
Orla Hazra, PhD currently lives in Sarasota Florida after recently returning from ten years in Mumbai, India. While in India she developed a curriculum to renew the Ignatian (Jesuit) Pedagogical Paradigm, applying it at St. Xavier’s College and at Tarumitra, an ecoliteracy center in Patna. Her academic formation in recreation leadership, addiction counseling, and spiritual direction, led her into a PhD program in Religious Education, from Fordham University; her research becoming a model for educational reform considering the fourfold wisdom conversation suggested by Thomas Berry — science, religion, women and indigenous peoples. She is a founding board member of the Deeptime Network and is delighted to be witnessing the model in practice, healing our trauma of separation.
Margie Abbott calls herself an elder and is devoted to working for thriving communities for the rest of her life. Margie is qualified to teach and guide because of her long life experience and reflection on that life experience. Her professional qualifications include education, theology, spirituality, group facilitation and psychodrama. Margie is actively involved as a member of XR in regular nonviolent actions for climate change.
John Leydon is an Irish priest of the Missionary Society of St. Columban (SSC) who has been in the Philippines since 1973. Aside from his pastoral work, most of his missionary years were dedicated to social action and ecological work. For several years, he had been the coordinator of the Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Ministry of SSC. Inspired by the wisdom of Thomas Berry, he co-founded, in 1998, the Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning (CELL), an eco-spirituality center in Silang, Cavite, with two other Columban priests and a local resident whose family owns the land where the center was set up. He also co-founded, in 2019, the Terra Sisters of the Trinity, a new and emerging Universe/Earth-centered Philippine-based Catholic religious community of women. He is currently a member of the Global Council of the Laudato Si’ Movement (LSM), formerly Global Catholic Climate Movement and Chairperson of its Philippine Chapter, LSM-Pilipinas.
Elizabeth (Bing) Carranza, a passionate Earth-lover, is Co-Founder and Coordinator of the Terra Sisters of the Trinity, a Philippine-based religious community called to embrace the story of the 14 billion years of evolutionary creation as its guiding principle and to listen to the heartbeat of Mother Earth as the very Heartbeat of the Triune God which was established in 2019. She served as College Physics Instructor at UP before she entered religious life. She lives and works at the Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning (CELL), an eco-spirituality center committed to the telling of the Universe Story and bringing Laudato Si’ to life. She is also a part of the core group of the Laudato Si’ Movement (LSM) Pilipinas and the LSM Asia Pacific Eco-Spirituality Working Group. Active in the ecological circle in the Philippines for almost 20 years now, she was Chairperson of the Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance Inc. and was also part of the Board to four other environmental organizations.
Confirmed Faculty for “Applying the New Cosmology”
(Deeptime Leadership Program – Module 2)
Jennifer Morgan, president and founder of the Deeptime Network, is an award-winning author, storyteller, and educator inspired by the work of Teilhard de Chardin, Maria Montessori, Thomas Berry, and Brian Swimme. Her Universe Story Trilogy — Born With a Bang, From Lava to Life, and Mammals Who Morph — are used in classrooms around the world, particularly in Montessori schools as part of the Cosmic Education Curriculum, and have received the Teachers Choice Award, Nautilus Semi Finalist, highest ratings from AAAS and endorsements from Jane Goodall, Neil de Grasse Tyson, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme and others. She is Vice President of the American Teilhard Association. Her life inspiration is to foster emergence by helping to link a planetary nervous system of people immersed in this radical new understanding.
Orla Hazra, PhD currently lives in Sarasota Florida after recently returning from ten years in Mumbai, India. While in India she developed a curriculum to renew the Ignatian (Jesuit) Pedagogical Paradigm, applying it at St. Xavier’s College and at Tarumitra, an ecoliteracy center in Patna. Her academic formation in recreation leadership, addiction counseling, and spiritual direction, led her into a PhD program in Religious Education, from Fordham University; her research becoming a model for educational reform considering the fourfold wisdom conversation suggested by Thomas Berry — science, religion, women and indigenous peoples. She is a founding board member of the Deeptime Network and is delighted to be witnessing the model in practice, healing our trauma of separation.
Ambie Abano, a licensed architect, she followed her allurement to the visual arts in the pursuit of finding space to express her curiosities about life, self and the nature of things. With an art practice that spans over thirty years, she continues to engage the creative adventure in printmaking, exploring both material and process to bring her content in expanded forms of woodcuts . She earned her MFA from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, where she has been teaching for the past 18 years. https://sites.google.com/view/ambieabano/home https://sites.google.com/view/day-one-group-exhibition/home
Cliff Berrien is a professional drummer, percussionist, music educator and performer of music of the African diaspora with over 35 years’ experience. Performing with ensembles in the U.S., Europe, India, Nigeria and Japan, he also has 30 years of experience as a professional night club and mobile DJ specializing in interactive, multimedia and World Music programming. In 1995 he was introduced to the work of Brian Swimme and began a journey of discovering multidisciplinary, multicultural, and artistic approaches to exploring the cosmos. A contemplative practitioner since 1975, he was invited to be a curator of spiritual practices for the Daily Meditations and Program Design teams at The Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM. In 2016 he recommended Dr. Barbara A. Holmes for a faculty position with the Center’s Living School where he had the honor of assisting her developing student curriculum that explored her books, Race and the Cosmos and Joy Unspeakable.
Kendra Kehde is a scholar, poet, and visual artist with degrees in English literature and feminist post-structuralist theory from Vassar College and Brown University. Her work explores the intersection of consciousness, embodiment, and creative emergence through both traditional and experimental uses of form, cross-pollinating poetry with the discourses of science, history, philosophy, and music, as well as visual expressions which emphasize iridescence, texture, and dynamic use of color.
Marianne Rowe, MS, is a Founding Teacher of Monterey Bay Meditation Studio, an Emergent Dialogue facilitator, and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Pacific Grove, CA. Her teaching, therapeutic work and leadership focus on healing, transformation and evolution through awareness and relationship — developing Integral consciousness through the physiological, cognitive, emotional, relational and spiritual aspects of being. She is dedicated to catalyzing and cultivating embodiment of a New Story for human beings (inspired by Charles Eisenstein) and playing a conscious role as part of the evolving Universe Story (inspired by Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, and Duane Elgin). Marianne’s passions include inspiring reverence and reciprocity with Earth and Universe, spiritual activism, and conscious relationship with all beings.
Kim Bella, Ph.D., LCMHC, LCAS, EMDR trained, is a psychologist specializing in transpersonal and expressive arts approaches to mental health. She works with individuals, couples, families, and groups. One of her areas of expertise is using embodied and mindfulness-based practices to uncover and release blocks to mental, emotional, creative, and spiritual well-being.
Lisa Verni, LCSW, is a seasoned psychotherapist, deeptime consultant, writer, artist, and dancer who loves helping people live their authentic lives through alignment with the Universe. Stephen Martin sees her as a ‘comic lamplighter’ because of her particular gift of reflecting back people’s radiant energy to develop their allurements. Lisa holds degrees in Business/Marketing and Clinical Social Work from NYU, and is a Certified Deeptime Leader. In completing her Emergence Project, Lisa created an artistic and therapeutic offering called “Dancing with the Pain”. It is meant to inspire hope and understanding through the embodiment and expression of a Deeptime Perspective. It can be found at www.dancingwiththepain.org. Lisa lectures on topics such as ‘Applying A Deeptime Perspective to Psychotherapy’ and ‘On Creative Process’, and will be joining us throughout the program to share her Emergences. Please feel free to contact her directly for mentoring and Deeptime Conversation.
M.J. Zimmerman, PhD, has long been allured to the big picture, and so pursued studies in Comparative Literature, History of Ideas, and the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program at CIIS. She taught at the college level for many years, but for the past 12 years has been a mental health counselor, working to integrate the healing power of the universe story perspective into a therapy context. She also draws on Jungian thought and ecopsychology in her work.
Margie Abbott calls herself an elder and is devoted to working for thriving communities for the rest of her life. Margie is qualified to teach and guide because of her long life experience and reflection on that life experience. Her professional qualifications include education, theology, spirituality, group facilitation and psychodrama. Margie is actively involved as a member of XR in regular nonviolent actions for climate change.
Sarbmeet Kanwal, PhD is an award-winning educator and a pioneer in novel ways of teaching quantum physics and astronomy. He holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the California Institute of Technology. His aptitude for explaining intricate scientific concepts in everyday language, has made him a sought after speaker among both science and non-science communities. He is the presenere of a TEDx talk on our new cosmic story, titled Chaos to Cosmos. Sarbmeet is a follower of the Sikh religion and a long time board member of the Monmouth Center for World Religions and Ethical Thought where he helped initiate several interfaith projects including the co-founding of an award winning youth leadership program called MOSAIC. In the last two years he has been assisting with instruction for Deeptime Network courses.
Confirmed Faculty for “Deeptime Leadership Practicum”
(Deeptime Leadership Program – Module 3)
Matthew Fox is a spiritual theologian, an Episcopal priest and an activist for gender justice and eco-justice. He has written 39 books that have been translated into over 60 languages. As founder of the University of Creation Spirituality in California and The Cosmic Mass, he conducts dozens of workshops each year and is a visiting scholar at the Academy for the Love of Learning. He is the recipient of many awards including: The Abbey Courage of Conscience Peace Award. Recent projects include Order of the Sacred Earth and Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox as well as The Cosmic Mass. For further information go to: www.matthewfox.org. www.dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org
Mary Evelyn Tucker is co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology where she teaches in an MA program between the School of the Environment and the Divinity School. With John Grim she organized 10 conferences on World Religions and Ecology at Harvard. They were series editors for the 10 resulting volumes from Harvard. She co-edited Confucianism and Ecology, Buddhism and Ecology, and Hinduism and Ecology. She has authored with John Grim, Ecology and Religion (Island Press, 2014). They also edited Thomas Berry’s books including Selected Writings (Orbis 2014). Tucker and Grim published Thomas Berry: A Biography (Columbia University Press, 2019). With Brian Thomas Swimme she wrote Journey of the Universe (Yale 2011) and was the executive producer of the Emmy award winning Journey film that aired on PBS. She served on the International Earth Charter Drafting Committee and was a member of the Earth Charter International Council.
Yona FrenchHawk is a full-blooded Cherokee Wisdom Keeper and Ceremonialist. He was born and raised on the Qualla Indian Boundary and is an enrolled member of The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in the Great Smoky Mountains in Cherokee, N.C., the Cherokee Indian Reservation. Yona offers his BirdClan gift of song, storytelling, plus insights into the prophesies and ceremonies of the Eastern Cherokees. This knowledge bridges the ancient past with the deep future. We honor their voices and visions of ancestors by sharing the abundance life has to offer. Yona offers individual sessions to assist in being present in one’s current journey while connecting with ancestral healing. Yona helps to connect with one’s roots to truly live an organic green way of life and embrace the legacy of connecting cultures by understanding what fruit to bear according to our roots. Click here for more info: http://www.yonafrenchhawk.com/
