Co-Chair, BZC Board of Directors
After a year as chief resident, Ellen joined the faculty at NYU/Bellevue and shortly thereafter became the Associate Program Director and ultimately the Program Director for the categorical Internal Medicine Residency Program. She is also an Assistant Professor at the NYU School of Medicine and the Vice Chair of Graduate Medical Education for the Department of Medicine. She has trained as a facilitator through the American Academy on Communication in Health Care and the Matrix Leadership Institute. She has extensive experience in...
Co-Chair, BZC Board of Directors; Sits on Development Committee
Larry founded and for fifteen years was the Producing Artistic Director of the award-winning New Repertory Theatre in Boston, where he produced and/or directed more than fifty productions. His plays have been professionally produced in New York, London, Boston, Chicago, and at the Edinburgh Festival. He has taught theatre at Stanford and M.I.T. He brings extensive experience and expertise in non-profit development and management to the Board of Directors. Larry has also been a Buddhist mindfulness...
BZC Co-founder; Executive Director, Awake Youth Project Coordinator
Greg is a Zen Buddhist priest and the current director of Brooklyn Zen Center. Having started two successful businesses and held executive positions in start-ups and publicly traded companies, he has well over a decade of executive management experience in both the profit and non-profit sectors. He was also the former Education Director at the Austin Zen Center and has many years of experience in the social service sector, including refugee resettlement, human rights work, life and employment skills...
BZC Co-founder
Laura is currently a psychotherapist, affiliated with the Buddhist Psychotherapy Collective, with her own practice in Manhattan. Until recently, Laura was a part of the clinical staff of Payne Whitney at New York-Presbyterian hospital. As a clinician, Laura uses mindfulness practices to support healing and transformation. Before co-founding Brooklyn Zen Center, Laura had trained and lived in various Buddhist communities since 1997, including Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery and San Francisco Zen Center. She was Director of Austin Zen Center, where she...
BZC Co-founder; Secretary; Communications Committee Chair
Ian Case helped found the Brooklyn Zen Center in 2005. He currently serves as the Secretary on the Board of Directors as well as the Chair of the Communications Committee. He holds a Masters in Linguistics and currently works in the advertising and communications industries as an editor. Ian is responsible for the editing of all information, including the web site, governance documents, and all publicity and collateral materials. He is also a classical guitarist and instructor and sits on the Arts...
Arts Committee Chair; Sits on Outreach Committee
An accomplished composer, arranger, educator and bassist, Adam Bernstein has performed internationally since 1988, when he graduated from Rutgers Universityʼs Mason Gross School of the Arts. Bernstein can currently be heard performing with the award winning children's music group the Laurie Berkner Band and many others in concert halls and clubs throughout the U.S. Adam received a proclamation for his outstanding work in jazz education from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz in 2005 and now directs the...
Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair
Mitch is a network and computer administrator for financial, payroll, timekeeping, and inventory systems who has consulted extensively with Arthur Andersen and American Business Systems among others. He also has wide-ranging managerial and administrative experience. He is currently employed by New York City Transit as a computer specialist for financial operations.
Sits on Communications Committee
Monica is a published poet and non-fiction writer who holds an MFA in Creative Writing, and has completed her first memoir. She presently teaches writing at the City University of New York and leads mindfulness and creative writing workshops at Brooklyn Zen Center. Monica started and managed her own food services business for nearly a decade before selling it. She also worked for Ulster Project Delaware in Northern Ireland, an organization whose mission was to integrate Catholic and Protestant children in post-conflict Ireland....
Development Committee Chair
Yael is also the founder and Director of The Spirituality Project at NYU, one of the first campus-wide mindfulness initiatives in the country. Yael is also a member of the Mindfulness Teacher Training program at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She is a graduate of New York University College of Arts and Sciences and Northeastern University School of Law. Prior to attending law school, Yael worked for three years at the Third Wave Foundation, an organization that...
Stuart has practiced law for thirty years, specializing in construction finance for affordable housing development. In addiiton to photography, his interests include flyfishing because of the challenge of catching flies with a fishing rod.