Suzanne Buckley is manager of mission advancement at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, where she completed her spiritual direction formation in 1992. In her previous corporate career she developed training programs for Fortune 500 companies. An educator, spiritual director, and supervisor of spiritual directors, she is an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco as well as program staff for the summer internship in spiritual direction at Mercy Center. Suzanne holds a B.S. in organizational development and an M.A. in applied spirituality.

T. Frank Kennedy, S.J., Ph.D., is currently rector of the Jesuit Community, the director of The Jesuit Institute, and the chairperson of the department of music, all at Boston College.

Fr. Sanks, Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at the Jesuit School, teaches courses in The Community Called Church, Readings in Liberation Theology, Theological Method, Theology of Paul Tillich and Vatican II Revisited. His course material often parallels his own professional interests, which include ecclesiology, theological method, liberation theology, Vatican II, ecumenism, and globalization and inculturation. Fr. Sanks has authored several books and articles; among them, Salt, Heaven and Light: The Community Called Church; Reading the Signs of the Times: Resources for Social and Cultural Analysis; The Church's Social Mission:...

Takeuchi Yoshinori was Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University. One of the leading figures of the Kyoto School of philosophy, he is the author of numerous works on Buddhism and his own Shin Buddhist faith, including The Heart of Buddhism: In Search of the Timeless Spirit of Primitive Buddhism.

Professor Berger teaches in the field of liturgical studies and in Catholic theology; she holds doctorates in both fields. Her scholarly interests for many years lay at the intersection of these disciplines with gender theory.

Tessa Bielecki is Mother Abbess of the Spiritual Life Institute,a Carmelite community with hermitages in Colorado, Nova Scotia, and Ireland. She studied for a career in international relations at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., before entering a monastery in 1967. Mother Tessa is actively involved in Buddhist-Christian dialogs and international initiatives exploring world peace and planetary survival. She is the author of Teresa of Avila: Ecstasy and Common Sense and Holy Daring, and publisher of Forefront,a quarterly magazine of contemporary spirituality.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and is both the temporal and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. He travels the world speaking on peace and interreligious understanding, giving Buddhist teachings, and meeting with political leaders as he works tirelessly on behalf of the Tibetan people. He resides in Dharamsala, India, and is the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile.