The Columbia Law School Mindfulness Program invites you to a meditation for faculty, staff, and students, held via live-stream on Wednesday, January 27th from 12:15 - 1 pm. These sessions are oriented to beginners and also open to those more experienced with mindfulness practices, and they include guided meditation as well as discussion of mindfulness meditation. Participants are also invited to bring lunch to these sessions and enjoy their meal in community. This week's session will be led by Gina Sharpe and hosted by Richard Gray (bios below).
To access the live-stream of this session, please follow this link.
Gina Sharpe was born in Jamaica and immigrated to New York at the age of 11. She has an A.B. in Philosophy from Barnard College and a J.D. from New York University School of Law. Before practicing law, she worked for the New York City government (the Lindsay Administration), in the motion picture industry (as Assistant to the Producer of feature length films Little Big Man, Paper Lion and Alice’s Restaurant), as well as conducting research in public not-for-profits. As a lawyer, she practiced as a corporate litigator and then as a corporate lawyer. She also served as an executive in the fields of venture capital and mergers and acquisitions.
After retiring from the practice of law, she co-founded New York Insight Meditation Center. She currently serves as the Guiding Teacher. Trained as a retreat teacher in a joint Teacher Training Program of Spirit Rock Meditation Center and Insight Meditation Society, she teaches at various venues around the United States including Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society, Vallecitos Mountain Refuge, Mid America Dharma, Garrison Institute, Asia Society, Tibet House, the New York Open Center, the Katonah Yoga Center and a maximum security prison for women. She has been teaching the Dharma since 1995. She has served on the boards of directors of several not-for-profit and for-profit organizations. To learn more, visit ginasharpe.org.
Richard Gray, Jr. is a Lecturer at Columbia Law School, where he offers courses including "Lawyer Leadership: Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading Change" and "Vision, Action, and Social Change." He is the director of the community organizing and engagement division of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University (AISR).
His work includes providing strategic support on community organizing and engagement to community and school reform organizations in cities across the country and directing the Center for Education Organizing at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform to help expand the power of education organizing through building strategic alliances among organizations and with strategic partners, such as teachers unions, reform support organizations, civil rights organizations, and research and policy institutes.
Before joining the institute, Gray was the director of National Technical Assistance with the Community Involvement Program at New York University’s Institute for Education and Social Policy (IESP), where he assisted community groups in New York City and across the country in developing strategies to improve local schools and shape more effective and equitable education policies. Gray was also the co-executive director of the National Coalition of Advocates for Students (NCAS), a nationwide network of child advocacy organizations that work to improve the access of quality public education to student populations who have traditionally been underserved by public schools.
Gray received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.A. from Brown University.
