Suzanne Benally
BA, English, University of Colorado
MA, Education, University of Colorado
Suzanne Benally has extensive experience in higher education policy, assessment and diversity. Formerly she directed an Institute on Ethnic Diversity at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. Ms. Benally has worked with the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, as an interim executive director and director of education programs to address the concerns and needs of American Indian education K–12 and post-secondary. Her special interests and research have focused on the relationship between land and place as expressed through written and oral literature. In addition to her many activities, Ms. Benally has a consulting practice that has included work with Foundations including the Ford Foundation, Packard Foundation and James Irvine Foundation. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Western States Arts Federation. Ms. Benally is Navajo and Santa Clara Tewa.
Jeanine M. Canty BA, Colgate University, International Relations
MA, Prescott College, Cultural Ecopsychology
PhD, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Transformative Learning and Change
Education, awareness and transformation are revered processes for Jeanine. Her work addresses the ecological crisis through critical thinking, unraveling of worldviews, connecting with all of life and changing our practices to be aligned with ecologically healthy modes of being. Her areas of passion include ecopsychology, consciousness, transformative learning, environmental and social justice and cultural studies. She is interested in the process individuals go through to reach heightened awareness of environmental and social justice. Jeanine is involved with multiple social justice and consciousness–based organizations. Much of her understanding has come through her experience as an African American woman living in privileged communities.
Sherry Ellms
BA, University of California, Los Angeles, Psychology
MA, Naropa University, Environmental Leadership
Sherry Ellms is chair of the Environmental Studies Department, teaches a variety of contemplative practices, including meditation, and facilitates earth-based experiences and their application to leadership, earth stewardship and personal sustainability. She leads wilderness solos and other nature-based programs that facilitate a deep connection with the power and insight of the natural world. For the past twenty-five years, she has been conducting retreats and teaching meditation in secular settings such as Outward Bound, as well as in spiritual settings throughout out the country. She teaches an online course, Meditation for Social Change Leaders, in the Ecopsychology concentration of the MA Transpersonal Psychology Program. Sherry is a longtime meditation practitioner and a student of the university’s founder, Choygam Trungpa Rinpoche.. Her master’s thesis was titled "Tonglen as a Tool for Transformative Environmental Engagement." In addition to her contemplative scholarship, she served as Naropa University’s dean of students for twelve years. She has studied with Joanna Macy and trained at the School of Lost Borders. She is committed to investigating the interdependence of landscape and the psyche and facilitating activities that transform human consciousness.
Anne Z. Parker
BS, Conservation of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley
MA, Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University
MA, Geography, University of Oregon
PhD, Geography, University of Oregon
Anne Parker is core faculty of the Environmental Studies Department at Naropa University and currently on sabbatical until summer 2010. She has lived, traveled and studied extensively throughout the Himalayas and Central Australia. Before coming to Naropa, she taught geography and international studies at the University of Oregon, was the program director at Interface in Boston, and directed the national Buddhist organization, the Dzogchen Foundation. She has received Fulbright and NSF grants for her work on traditional agriculture in Bhutan, Nepal and India. Anne led wilderness expeditions for many years with the Sierra Club and Marble Mountain Expeditions, and she leads pilgrimages in Tibet, Bhutan and the Himalayan region. Anne has studied and practiced for more than thirty years in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In addition, she has devoted the last six years to extensive study in European earth-based traditions of wicca, druidry and the art of geomancy. She currently consults and teaches in the European tradition of the Master Builders in the Boulder area and via her website www.latitudewithattitude.com. Her new book Stories from the Origin, a series of stories from her life in Australian aboriginal communities, is available at www.amazon.com. She teaches innovative classes in physical and cultural geography in Naropa University’s BA in Environmental Studies. In the MA in Environmental Leadership she teaches leadership skills, the new science, applied leadership and a wilderness solo course. She is passionate about serving life and renewing our connection and deep reverence for the Earth.
Paul Aldretti
BA Anthropology, Colorado State University
Fulbright Fellow, United States-India Educational Foundation, Sustainable Development
For almost 20 years Paul Aldretti has designed, implemented, and managed energy efficiency and renewable energy programs within strategic projects related to global climate change and sustainable development. He has worked with local communities, national agencies, small businesses and global corporations throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. In 2005 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to work with NGOs in India in creating partnerships to support renewable energy projects for sustainable rural development. He has served as the Director of Climate Programs at Business for Social Responsibility, as Executive Director of the Colorado Environmental Partnership and on boards of directors for the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education and the Carbon Neutral Network.
Jane Bunin
BS, Genetics, Cornell University
MA, Biochemistry, Brandeis University
PhD, Plant Ecology and Ecosystem Management, University of Colorado
Jane teaches in the Environmental Studies and Transpersonal Counseling Psychology departments. She was an ecological consultant for more than twenty years before coming to Naropa, where she now teaches classes in ecology and environmental science. Jane taught ethno-botany at the Rocky Mountain Center for Botanical Studies. Her interests also include ecological restoration, parallels of themes in ecology and contemplative practice, and the complementarity of modern ecology with traditional, natural element-based cultures, especially Ayurveda and Andean traditions.
Richard Dart BS, University of South Alabama, Geology
MA, Naropa University, Environmental Leadership
Richard Dart has taught nature awareness and survival skills at Naropa University since 1994. He has been a student of the outdoors most of his life and has learned from outdoor educators such as James Halfpenny, Tom Brown, Jr., and Native American elders. In 1992, Richard established Featherlight Skills, offering classes, lectures, and demonstrations in primitive and modern wilderness living skills. In addition, since 1973 Richard has served as a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and is the author of numerous publications and maps for the USGS. He has been an invited speaker at sustainability conferences at the University of Colorado and Naropa University. Richard’s philosophy emphasizes rediscovery of our natural place in the natural world, and he offers a hands-on approach deeply rooted in an attitude of humility, gratitude, and respect. Richard is also certified as a Wilderness First Responder.
Doug Dupler BS, Ohio State University
MA, Ohio State University
Doug Dupler is the editor of Conserving the Environment and the author of Energy: Shortage, Glut, or Enough?. He has published numerous articles on environmental issues, holistic medicine, science topics and literature. He has worked as a wilderness surveyor and management consultant. At several universities and colleges, he has taught environmental studies, literature and writing, economics and math. His interests include the history of the environmental movement, the economics of sustainability, integral ecology, ecocriticism and writing as activism.
Nancy Jane
BA, French and Education, Lake Erie College
BS, Natural Resources Conservation, University of Massachusetts
MA, Transpersonal Psychology / Ecopsychology, Naropa University
Nancy Jane is an educator, wilderness guide and council facilitator. On staff at the School of Lost Borders in CA, a training center for wilderness rites of passage guides, she leads youth, adult, and elder wilderness solos and has pioneered bringing this work to school settings. She has trained in the way of council with the Center for Council Training, Ojai, CA. For many years a naturalist and forester, Nancy is also an author (Bicycle Touring in the Pioneer Valley), an editor, an instructor of English as a second language, and formerly the director of admissions for a Waldorf school. Nancy has a special interest in working with people in deep ways, by connecting them to nature and furthering personal growth.
Marco Lam
BA, University of California, Santa Barbara
MS, Southwest Acupuncture College
Marco Lam has been practicing and teaching permaculture and sustainable living skills for more than a decade in diverse climates from the Andes to the Hawaiian islands. Originally trained by the founder of Permaculture, Bill Mollison, Marco’s teaching style moves away from the lecture format and emphasizes getting people’s hands in the Earth. Marco is a practicing acupuncturist and herbalist who grows many of the herbs used in his practice. He is the co-author of The Herbal Therapeutics Manual, a guide to using local plants in the energetic tradition of Chinese herbalism. Living with his family on a 200 acre organic herb farm, as a founding board member of the Boulder Biodiesel Cooperative and as the ceo of Divine Farmer Herbals, Marco puts into practice the principles of permaculture on a daily basis.
Anjali Vaidya
BSc, Punjab University, India: Botany, Zoology & Chemistry
MSc, Pune University, India: Botany & Environmental Studies
PhD, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India: Plant Pathology & Mycology
Having spent her youth in more than a dozen places in India, Anjali has been blessed with exposure to diversity. She came to the US via the San Francisco Bay Area, where she enjoyed visits to the city, coast, Central Valley and the Sierras in equal measure. She has worked as a research scientist, master gardener, and horticultural advisor. She began her professional career as an agricultural extension officer in Rajasthan, where she learned from the village people even as she taught them. Her teaching philosophy grew out of this experience to blend theory, practice and everyday life. As adjunct faculty in colleges in California and Colorado she has taught microbiology, environment studies etc. Her other interests include pottery and sustainable horticulture.
Suzanne Benally 
Jeanine M. Canty
Sherry Ellms
Anne Z. Parker
Paul Aldretti
Jane Bunin
Richard Dart
Doug Dupler 
Nancy Jane 
Marco Lam 
Anjali Vaidya