2024 Conference
Keynote Speakers &
Retreat Leaders

Award-winning performer, writer, and educator advocating storytelling as compassionate action for  personal and community transformation. She is the Artistic Director of the Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling  Center in NY and the founder of The Center for Engaged Storytelling  (new). She has been  a Senior Research Fellow for the International  Peace institute at Rutgers University Newark under the auspices of  UNESCO.  As a spokesperson for storytelling she presents keynotes and workshops in conferences, villages, schools, universities and community events. Member of the Therapeutic Arts Alliance of Manhattan. Senior Teacher of Shambhala Buddhist meditation. Laura received the Brimstone Award for Engaged Storytelling, CHOICE award for best  story collection and Sesame Street's SUNNY DAYS award for work with  children worldwide. In 2011 she received a Life Time Achievement Award  from the National Storytelling Network.  She is co-faculty with Terry  Tempest Williams at University of Utah, consults with ETSU’s CANCER  STORIES project, and is spoken word consultant for Foundations, NGOS  working in post disaster and conflicts. She is author of Our Secret Territoy: The  Essence of Storytelling (Sentient Publications, 2011).

Singer Erica Gabriel received her Bachelor’s Degree in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy from Oakwood University. Her training also includes a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan. She has performed with the Chicago Symphony orchestra, the Jacksonville Symphony, the Savannah Philharmonic, and the Jackson Symphony.

She was cast in Ravinia’s production of Bernstein’s Mass under the baton of Marin Alsop, which Aired on the PBS Television Network as a part of their “Great Performances” series. She has also toured with the renowned American Spiritual Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Everett McCorvey.

Her competition credits and awards include The Alma Blackmon Scholarship Award, Winner of Classical Singer Regional University Competition, winner of the Hartford Memorial Scholarship Competition, Second place winner of the Alltech Scholarship competition, and the 2018 Gold Medal winner of the American Traditions Vocal Competition.

Professor Emerita at Emory University, Bobbi cultivates conversation, discovery, and action born at the intersection of contemplative practice and community engagement. Trained academically as an Interdisciplinarian of Religious Studies, her research and publications range from women’s embodied spirituality to Christian and Buddhist contemplative traditions to place-based knowledge and pedagogies for earth-care and community-based engagement. Her recent work with Adaptive Resilience Theory has benefitted organizations working with issues of environmental and climate insecurity. A nationally awarded teacher, she designs presentations, workshops, and retreats for skill-building, creativity, and action. An Episcopal priest, member of the Fellowship of St. John the Evangelist, and Steering Council Member of The Mind and Life Institute, she recently wrote Building Resilience Through Contemplative Practice: A Field Manual for Helping Professionals and Volunteers (Routledge).

Carine Gibert is the founder and lead facilitator of Grounded in Motion. Grounded In Motion’s work centers on what it looks like to deepen human-earth connection, advocate for the Rights of Nature and biodiversity protection while reframing what education and installations can do to remind us of our coexistence with the natural world. Carine has been curating, teaching and designing with communities globally in a common effort to place ecological flourishing at the center of each project. The learning journeys she designs offer a different kind of educational roadmap, one that investigates how the union of contemplative wisdom, art and science can lead to greater awareness of the interconnectedness of the earth’s living systems. Her teachings are grounded in Deep Ecology and Gaian principles. Grounded in Motion merges the artistic, scientific and contemplative to create spaces of embodied learning while emphasising that we are in relational existence with Earth. Carine has been teaching and facilitating for the past 2 decades including courses at the Lycee Francais de New York, UWC World Colleges, Mind and Life Institute, Harvard University, and the Association for the Advancement of International Education. She is a mentor for fellows attending the Learning For Action course at TerraDo. Carine has performed as a contemplative poet for Courage of Care, and Forever Sabah Institute. She released her first EP, Honoring Holocene last year, a spoken word album as a way to shift climate activism into experiential learning and embodied practice.

​Lance Brunner brings an unusual perspective to his musical scholarship and teaching. A graduate of Brown University, he earned his MA and PhD degrees in musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also studied in Germany at the University of Erlangen with the renowned chant scholar Bruno Stäblein. He has been the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships, including the Elliott Prize from the American Mediaeval Academy and the Notes Prize from the Music Library Association, as well as awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, American-Scandinavian Foundation, American Philosophical Society, and the German Academic Exchange Service. Lance held a Kellogg National Fellowship from 1985-1988, researching the role of music in human health and healing. He was co-founder (with Arthur Harvey) of Music for Health Services Foundation in 1986 and he served as adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of Louisville (1990-93), where he worked with the Center for the Study of Music and Medicine. He is a founding member of the UK’s Emerging Leader Institute (1989-2006) and has taught a seminar on creativity and business for a variety of organizations. He has led numerous mediation and contemplative arts workshops and retreats nationally and internationally for over thirty years. Lance has been on the faculty of the UK School of Music since 1976 and will be retiring in June, 2024.

A native of Danville, Kentucky, Frank X Walker is the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. Walker has published ten collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. He is also the author of Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, winner of the 2004 Lillian Smith Book Award, and Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride, which he adapted for stage, earning him the Paul Green Foundation Playwrights Fellowship Award. His poetry was also dramatized for the 2016 Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV and staged by Message Theater for the 2015 Breeders Cup Festival. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets, subsequently publishing the much-celebrated eponymous collection. His honors also include a 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, the 2008 and 2009 Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry in Appalachian Heritage, the 2013 West Virginia Humanities Council’s Appalachian Heritage Award, as well as fellowships and residences with Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Kentucky Arts Council. The recipient of honorary doctorates from University of Kentucky, Transylvania University, Spalding University and Centre College, Walker is the founding editor of pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture and serves as Professor of English and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.