kose new background3

Founding Fellows


Stephen Bolles, D.C.

Founding Fellow

Stephen Bolles, D.C. has spent the last 30 years in health care: as a provider, in professional government affairs, non-profit institutional executive with a focus on integrative health care, as a consumer product developer and manager for UnitedHealth Group, and as an entrepreneur and consultant. With an orientation towards and a focus on healthcare consumerism he has designed, implemented and managed a series of strategic projects for clients

Elizabeth M. Bounds, Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Dr. Elizabeth M. Bounds, who joined Candler’s faculty in 1997, is engaged in the Justice, Peacebuilding, and Conflict Transformation Concentration, part of the Master of Divinity degree program at Candler. She also teaches courses as part of the Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding Concentration in Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion. Bounds’ interests include restorative justice and the prison system, peace-building and conflict transformation, democratic practices and civil society, feminist and liberation ethics, and transformative pedagogical practices. The core of her research, teaching and scholarship is focused on moral and theological responses to conflict and violence, whether in the U.S. prison system, ordinary congregational life, or post-conflict situations such as Liberia. She is the author of Coming Together/Coming Apart: Religion, Modernity, and Community (Routledge, 1997), co-editor of Welfare Policy: Feminist Critiques and Justice in the Making: Feminist Social Ethics (Pilgrim Press, 1999) and has authored several essays in edited volumes.

Lara Denis, Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Lara Denis, Ph.D., has broad interests in moral philosophy – historical and contemporary, theoretical and applied. The topics that most engage me concern the nature of moral goodness, how we ought to live, and what kind of people we should strive to be; a concrete issue close to my heart is the human response to and treatment of non-human animals. Among the courses I have taught recently are Happiness; Life, Death, and Meaning; Environmental Ethics; and Contemporary Moral Problems. Despite the breadth of my interests and teaching, the scope of my published work is rather narrow. My primary area of research to date has been Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy. Much of my work has focused on Kant’s conception of duties to oneself. My training is in analytic philosophy. I studied at Smith College and Cornell University. I taught at the University of California, Irvine, before coming to Agnes Scott College, where I am currently professor of philosophy and director of the ethics program.

Joe Dispenza, D.C.

Founding Fellow

As a researcher, Dr. Joe explores the science behind spontaneous remissions and how people heal themselves of chronic conditions and even terminal diseases. He’s more recently begun partnering with other scientists to perform extensive research on the effects of meditation during his advanced workshops. He and his team do brain mapping with electroencephalograms (EEGs) and individual energy field testing with a gas discharge visualization (GDV) machine, as well as measure both heart coherence with HeartMath monitors and the energy present in the workshop environment before, during, and after events with a GDVSputnik sensor. Soon, he plans to include epigenetic testing in this research, as well.

Thomas “Tom” Flores, Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Thomas “Tom” Flores, Ph.D. holds a PhD from Emory University in Religious Studies, with a concentration in Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding. He was heavily involved with Emory’s Initiative in Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding as its first Post-doctoral Fellow, then Visiting Professor of Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Practices, and later its Director of External Relations and Program Coordinator. His research interests integrate religion, peace studies and conflict transformation, expressive arts, psychologies of violence, altruism and enemy construction, inter-religious dialogue, international Museums for Peace, and peace building contemplative practices.

Corey Keyes, Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Corey Keyes holds the Winship Distinguished Research Professorship. He was a member of a MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development, and he co-chair—along with then American Psychological Association President and the CEO of the Gallup Organization—of the First Summit of Positive Psychology held in 1999. Dr. Keyes is a founding member of the Society for the Study of Human Development, participated in the National Academies of Science Keck Future’s Initiative on The Future of Human Healthspan, and was a contributing author to the World Health Organization’s publication entitled Mental Health Promotion Worldwide.

Richard Moore

Founding Fellow

At the age of ten, in 1972, Richard Moore was shot & blinded by a rubber bullet, fired by a British Soldier during the conflict in Derry, Northern Ireland. Richard has never allowed this experience to hinder or embitter him and has always forgiven the soldier. 33 years after the incident, Richard & Charles met and have remained good friends ever since. Richard returned to his old school and eventually graduated from University of Ulster in 1983. He was a successful businessman, musician, is married with two children. Richard attributes his ability to accept blindness to the support he received from family, friends and the local community. Richard is now the Director of Children in Crossfire, which he founded in 1996, helping children caught in the crossfire of poverty in Tanzania and Ethiopia. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet has described Richard as “His hero and a wonderful son of humanity”.

Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, Ph.D., a Senior Lecturer in Emory University's Department of Religion, is the co-founder and Director of the Emory-Tibet Partnership, a multi-dimensional initiative founded in 1998 to bring together the foremost contributions of the Western scholastic tradition and the Tibetan Buddhist sciences of mind and healing. In this capacity, he serves as Co-Director of both the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative and the Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies. He also developed Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), a systematic and secular compassion training based on traditional Tibetan Buddhist mind training meditations. CBCT is currently utilized in a number of research studies, including an NIH-funded study examining the efficacy of compassion meditation on the experience of depression. Dr. Negi is also the founder and spiritual director of Drepung Loseling Monastery, Inc. in Atlanta, GA—the North American seat of a six hundred year old Tibetan Buddhist monastic university.

Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, D.Phil.

Founding Fellow

Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, D.Phil., is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University. Dr. Ozawa-de Silva’s research focuses on cross-cultural understandings of health and illness, especially mental illness, by bringing together Western and Asian (particularly Japanese and Tibetan) perspectives on the mind-body, religion, medicine, therapy. She is currently the Principal Investigator of an ethnographic study of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training that is funded by the Mind and Life Institute and the Templeton Foundation, and was a recipient of an NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Fellowship in 2013-14. Her publications include one monograph, Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan: The Japanese Introspection Practice of Naikan (Routledge, 2006), and numerous peer-reviewed articles on psychotherapeutic practice, suicide, the mind-body relationship and Tibetan medicine.

Bobbi Patterson, Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Bobbi Patterson, Ph.D. Dr. Patterson joined Emory University’s faculty in 1994 after serving as a University Chaplain and Dean of Students. A specialist in spiritual practices, her comparative approach from Christian and Tibetan Buddhist perspectives emphasizes processes of self and communal transformation for ethical engagement in social change. Her recent scholarship and teaching focuses at the intersection of contemplative practices, experiences of place, and sustainability. With training in feminist theory and theology, her interests draw on the fields of symbolic anthropology, psychodynamics, and cultural constructions of self, nature, and community. Interested in phenomenological and embodied approaches to theory and teaching, she has secured a national place in pedagogical discussions on civic engagement, experiential education, and integrative pedagogies.

Alan Pope, Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Alan Pope, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. He received his Ph.D. in clinical existential-phenomenological psychology at Duquesne University in 2000 following advanced graduate studies in computer science and artificial intelligence. His understanding of human psychology is also deeply informed by more than twenties years of studying and practicing Tibetan Buddhism. Alan’s research generally seeks to elucidate the processes of psychospiritual transformation resulting from suffering (particularly loss) and creative and spiritual practice. His recent studies examine various aspects of Western psychology and culture through the lens of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, with particular interest in the phenomenon of modern consumerism. Alan incorporates contemplative techniques in almost all of his courses, including regular graduate seminars such as Consciousness and Experience, Buddhist Psychology, Psychology of Loss, and Psychology of Meditation. He has published numerous articles and book chapters and is the author of From Child to Elder: Personal Transformation in Becoming an Orphan at Midlife (2006, Peter Lang). He was the 2009 recipient of the American Psychological Association Division 32’s Carmi Harari Early/Mid-Career Award for Outstanding Contribution to Inquiry in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology. He is also a Georgia Governor’s Teaching Fellow.

Peggy Samples, Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Peggy Samples, Ph.D. is a social psychologist and currently serves as department head for the General Education and Psychology programs and is the interim director for online learning at Life University. She received her B.S. in psychology from the University of South Florida and her M.S. and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Georgia.

Rob Scott, D.C., Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Since his appointment as the fifth president of Life University in May 2017, Dr. Scott has championed a significant commitment to enhancing the University’s academic offerings, campus culture and physical facilities, while placing emphasis on expanding research infrastructure and supporting the rich diversity of the campus community. During Scott’s tenure, Life University has added new online academic programs and the first accredited degree program in a Georgia correctional center for incarcerated students. LIFE has opened a new 362-bed student living community and eatery – The Commons and Lyceum Dining Hall, along with significant updates and improvements across campus. In addition, student enrollments have seen new heights through impactful retention initiatives that support student learning, engagement and success. Dr. Scott holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physiology from the University of Minnesota, a Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Northwestern Health Sciences University and is the only president of a chiropractic College that also holds a Diplomate of Chiropractic Philosophical Standards. His master’s degrees include a Master of Science in Exercise Physiology and a Master’s of Education in Educational Administration from OISE at the University of Toronto. He attended the University of Guelph to earn his Bachelor of Science in Human Kinetics. Dr. Scott came to Life University in 2005 as the Dean of the College of Chiropractic before moving to Vice Provost and executive leadership roles in Academic Affairs. He has also worked as the Dean of Chiropractic at Northwestern Health Sciences University and as the Vice President for Academic Affairs at Logan College of Chiropractic.

Richard Shook, Ph.D.

Founding Fellow

Richard Shook, Ph.D. has over 30 years’ experience as a psychotherapist. His psychotherapeutic orientations have always included a strong humanistic and existential focus. His work integrates Gestalt, Jungian, object-­‐relations, family systems and Ericksonian hypnosis. His recent therapeutic focus has been on integrating mindfulness and acceptance themes with a special emphasis on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. He had the opportunity to experience the power of mind/body interventions while he served as a medic in the Air Force. He developed his mind/body interests more deeply when he completed his residency/internship at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center, and a fellowship in pain management in the Department of Anesthesiology. His pain management concentrated on using both hypnosis and mindfulness meditation in the treatment of severe pain. His clinical work in psychotherapy and health psychology has allowed him a front row seat to the self-­‐healing and self-­‐regulating powers we all share.

Michael Winskell, Atty.

Founding Fellow

Michael Winskell previously worked as a lawyer in England but now devotes his life to supporting those committed to promoting the interests of children and young people. He has worked with the Global Dialogues Trust (www.globaldialogues.org) since it’s creation in 1997. Global Dialogues combines the creative genius of young people and the power of social change media to cultivate empathy, compassion and unity in diversity. He also co-founded The Secure Base Foundation a UK based charity which seeks to support organisations such as Children in Crossfire (established by Richard Moore) and Global Dialogues.

Won-Jae Hur, Ph.D. (Cand.)

Founding Fellow

Won-Jae Hur, Ph.D. (Cand.) is currently a third-year student in the PhD program in Comparative Theology at Boston College. His area of research is in Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism, specifically focusing on contemplative practice in the Christian Carmelite tradition and lojong practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is also an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, he served in the Diocese of California.

Loading