Jan Willis, PhD

Middleton, Connecticut

Elected 2011 (Trustee)

Janice Willis, PhD,  is a Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University. Dr. Willis is one of the earliest American scholar-practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, and has published numerous essays and articles on Buddhist meditation, hagiography, women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and race. She has taught courses in Buddhism at Wesleyan since 1977. Time magazine named Dr. Willis one of six "spiritual innovators for the new millennium", Ebony called her one of its "Power 150" most influential African-Americans, and she was profiled in a 2005 Newsweek article about “Spirituality in America”.