Governance

Janet Bickel is a nationally recognized expert in academic medicine and science. Specializing in faculty, career and leadership development, she is noted for her foundational contribution to opening Brown University’s new Medical School. On the faculty of the George Washington University School of Medicine, she is a past vice president of the Association of American Medical Colleges. The CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Health and Human Services, are among the organizations and institutions she has advised, including numerous academic health centers and professional societies. A graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia, she holds an M.A. from Brown University, and is the author of two books and over 60 peer-reviewed articles.

Joan Borysenko, PhD, a pioneer in integrative medicine, is the author of The New York Times best seller, Minding the Body, Mending the Mind. After graduating magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College, Dr. Borysenko earned her doctorate in Medical Sciences from Harvard Medical School, where she completed post-doctoral training in cancer cell biology.

Her first faculty position was at the Tufts University College of Medicine in Boston. But after the death of her father from cancer, she returned to Harvard Medical School to complete a second postdoctoral fellowship, this time in the new field of behavioral medicine. Mentored by Herbert Benson, M.D., who also sits on the CMBM Advisory Board, she was awarded a Medical Foundation Fellowship and completed her third post-doctoral fellowship in psychoneuroimmunology.

In the early 1980s, Dr. Borysenko co-founded a Mind/Body clinic with Dr. Benson and Dr. Ilan Kutz, became licensed as a psychologist, and was appointed instructor in medicine at the Harvard Medical School. Author or co-author of 16 other books and numerous audio and video programs, including the Public Television special, Inner Peace for Busy People, she is the founding partner of Mind/Body Health Sciences, LLC, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Robert Coles, MD, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, clinician, and professor emeritus of psychiatry and medical humanities at the Harvard Medical School. A child psychiatrist by training, he began teaching first at Harvard Medical School; eventually teaching at several Schools across Harvard, weaving his medical training with literature and anthropological fieldwork to dig deeply into the social problems of our world.

A celebrated recipient of awards that include the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in recognition of his award-winning five-volume Children of Crisis, a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Humanities Medal, Dr. Coles is also the author of The Moral Intelligence of Children, The Spiritual Intelligence of Children, and Bruce Springsteen’s America.

Barrie Cassileth, PhD, is founder and immediate past Chief of the Integrative Medicine Department at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where she held the Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine. At Memorial Sloan Kettering, Dr. Cassileth established groundbreaking research, education, and clinical programs in integrative medicine. She is widely acknowledged as America’s foremost authority on complementary therapies and integrative medicine in oncology. Her work includes extensive writings in medical literature, medical textbook chapters, and books for physicians, patients, and families. She was a founding member of the Advisory Council to the U.S. National Institutes of Health National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Prior to joining Memorial Sloan Kettering she was on the faculty of the medical schools at both Duke University and at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The founding president of the Society for Integrative Oncology, Dr. Cassileth has presented at medical schools and conferences throughout the United States and the world. Dr. Cassileth holds a BA from Bennington College, an MS in psychology from Albert Einstein in New York, as well as a doctorate in medical sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Physician and New York Times best-selling author Larry Dossey, MD, was among the first to look closely at the elements of mind, consciousness and spirituality in healthcare.

Prior to his groundbreaking work, only three U.S. medical schools had courses devoted to exploring the role of religious practice and prayer in medicine. Today, nearly 80 medical schools have instituted this approach, and many now use Dr. Dossey’s titles, Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine and The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things  as textbooks.

He has lectured all over the world, including major medical schools and hospitals in the United States; Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, the Universities of Pennsylvania, California, Washington, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, and the Mayo Clinic.

The former Executive Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, he is Executive Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing.

The author of nine books, he was graduated with honors from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Dossey worked as a pharmacist while earning his MD degree from Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. Before completing his residency in internal medicine, he served as a battalion surgeon in Vietnam, where he was decorated for valor.

Mark Hyman, MD, is a member of the CMBM Board of Advisors and Faculty for Food as Medicine.

Dr. Hyman is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fourteen-time New York Times bestselling author, and BoardPresident for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Doctor’s Farmacy. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor on several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, and CNN. He is also an advisor and guest co-host on The Dr. Oz Show.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, is founding Executive Director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is also the founding director of its renowned Stress Reduction Clinic and Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

His work is credited with integrating mindfulness into mainstream institutions such as medicine, and psychology, health care and hospitals, schools, corporations, the legal profession, prisons, and professional sports. Dr. Kabat-Zinn is the founding convener of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, and serves on the Board of the Mind and Life Institute, a group that organizes dialogues between the Dalai Lama and Western scientists.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn received a PhD in molecular biology from MIT and is the author of numerous scientific papers on the clinical applications of mindfulness in medicine and health care; he has written a number of books for the lay public including: Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life; he has served as author or co-author of four other books. His works have been translated into over 30 languages.

Michael Lerner, PhD, is the co-founder and president of Commonweal, the health and environmental institute in Bolinas, California. Health and healing, education, and environmental justice are Commonweal’s three areas of focus.

Lerner’s own work at Commonweal is focused on the Cancer Help Program, Healing Circles, Beyond Conventional Cancer Therapies, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonwealth.

He is the recipient of a MacArthur  “genius” Fellowship for his contributions to public health. Born in New York City, Dr. Lerner was educated at Harvard University and received a PhD from Yale University, where he taught political science and psychology. He is the author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies.

Isabel Letelier is a longtime human rights activist, artist, and mother of four. A former fellow of the Institute of Policy Studies, she is the widow of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean diplomat, whose humanitarian legacy is commemorated in Washington, D.C.,  by a monument in Sheridan Circle on Massachusetts Avenue.

Dean Ornish, MD, is perhaps best known as being the first physician to provide documentation that comprehensive lifestyle changes may begin to reverse even severe heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic disease, without drugs or surgery.

He is the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute (PMRI). Founded in 1984, the Institute’s findings, that lifestyle changes can improve chronic conditions and transform lives, have earned the covers of magazines including Time, Newsweek and  U.S. News & World Report, and also been published in a myriad of peer-reviewed journals including the American Journal of Cardiology, JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, The Lancet Oncology, and the New England Journal of Medicine. PMRI has published research with Nobel Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn showing, for the first time, that lifestyle changes may lengthen telomeres, which may reverse aging on a cellular level. PMRI has also published research with J. Craig Ventner, the first to sequence the human genome.

The author of 6 nationally best-selling books, he received his MD from the Baylor College of Medicine. He was a clinical fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Ornish is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and at the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Kenneth R. Pelletier, PhD and MD, is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCSF School of Medicine and also serves as a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He is a former clinical professor of medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine, where he led the NIH-funded Complementary and Alternative Medicine Program at Stanford, known as CAMPS. An advisor to the World Health Organization,  Dr. Pelletier is a vice president of American Specialty Health and serves as chairman of the American Health Association.

At the UCSF School of Medicine, he is the Director of the Corporate Health Improvement Program, known as CHIP, a research program in collaboration with fifteen Fortune 500 corporations that include Oracle, Cisco, IBM, Dow, Prudential, Cummins, Ford, and the Mayo Clinic.

The author of numerous books, including the international bestseller, Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer,  he is a peer reviewer for medical journals that include the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He has published over 300 articles and has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and the BBC to discuss his research.

Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, is Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF School of Medicine and she was founder of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal. One of the first to recognize and document the psychological and spiritual impact of cancer on people and their families, she founded and served as medical director of one of the first support groups for cancer patients in America, Commonweal Cancer Help Program, and was featured in the groundbreaking PBS series Healing and the Mind, hosted by Bill Moyers.

The Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (ISHI), founded and directed by Dr. Remen, provides award-winning post graduate education programs for health professionals including doctors, nurses, psychologists and social workers.

Dr. Remen’s book, Healer’s Art is now taught yearly in more than half of American medical schools as well as in medical schools in seven countries abroad. Dr. Remen has been awarded numerous honorary degrees in recognition of her contribution to medical education and has been the invited speaker at more than two dozen medical school graduations. Dr. Remen’s New York Times bestselling books, Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings have sold more than a million copies and been translated into 23 languages.

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