I work as a Project Manager/Systems Analyst for a large Human Services non-profit in Philadelphia with over 25 years of experience, and am a community organizer who is active in various secular and religious organizations and an advocate for interfaith dialogue among local and national faith communities. Trained as a Spiritual Director (1999) with the Guild for Spiritual Guidance, I consult with individuals and organizations on ways to integrate Spirituality with Social Justice. My passions include Big History, Cosmology, Vedanta, Torah, Yoga and Nature (and the Delaware River in New Jersey where I live). Recently inspired by the Network for Spiritual Progressives leadership training and Rabbi Lerner’s latest book “Revolutionary Love”, I have been active since 2003 in a monthly dialogue group that seeks ways to bring an embodied spirituality together with a heart-centered politics. I have also published a book examining the generational trauma of war called “Generations of War: A Family’s History of World War II”.
My formal training is in Computer Science from Kansas State University, and I’ve worked largely in corporate technology positions up until I reached my 40’s – at that point a kind of spiritual hunger became intense, and I sought out the guidance of a person trained as a Spiritual Director. We met over an 8 year period, and through that process I was able to better understand what was motivating this spiritual hunger and quest, so I changed professions and began working for the Vincentian Order of the Catholic Church near Princeton, NJ running a program on Interfaith Spirituality. During this period of time, I was able to sort out that I felt “de-motivated” working in traditional corporate cultures (e.g. the Aerospace Industry, Insurance industry, Pharmaceuticals, Retail and Consulting as part of the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Family). Eventually, I shifted my focus to work mostly with “Not-For-Profit” agencies by applying technology to help them better fulfill their service-oriented missions (educational community based homeless sheltering agencies, Employment and Behavioral Health agencies). I also began a formal program of study in 1999 with the Guild for Spiritual Guidance program, a Spiritual Direction training program, and sought out the guidance and teachings of a Monastic monk within the South Asia Indian Community, the Bharat Sevashram Sangha in NJ, which I’ve maintained for the past 15 years.