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Mark Pfaff
President Committees: Finance, Development, Facilities mark.pfaff@sanshinji.org Mark has been a member of the Board of Directors since August 2009. He received the precepts from Okumura Roshi in 2001. From 2001 to 2004, he served on the board of Stillpoint, a Soto Zen practice community in Pittsburgh, PA, where he was the leader of the gardening crew, a member of the outreach community, and webmaster. When he first joined the Sanshin board of directors, Mark focused on our communication and technology resources supporting the local and global Sanshin community. He served as board secretary from 2010 until elected president in 2017. Over his career, Mark has worked in many different fields, including photography, music, and media production. Since 2008, he has worked as a researcher of the human experience of using complex technology. |
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David Thompson
Vice President, Director of the Dogen Institute david.thompson@sanshinji.org David joined the board of Sanshin in February 2012. David has been practicing with Okumura-roshi since 2004 in Pittsburgh, North Carolina and Bloomington; he has also practiced at other Zen centers on the east coast. He began sitting in 2001 with a student of Tenshin Reb Anderson and received the precepts from Reb in 2009. He is currently editing one of Okumura Roshi books-in-progress. David is employed as a policy analyst in a financial institution, and has master's degrees in American Civilization and in Organization Development, with particular interests in journaling, action research, creativity, and working with groups. He is thrilled to be associated with the Dogen Institute and is looking forward to helping move it forward. David is a native of Philadelphia, PA, enjoys hiking, is a second-year student of Japanese and practices his kanji every day. |
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Iris Peterson
Treasurer Committees: Finance (chair), Sangha Relations iris.peterson@sanshinji.org Iris is a professional ceramic artist living in Lafayette, Indiana. She is a member of the local sitting group, West Lafayette Zen Group, founded in 1968. Iris received her BA in Art/Ceramics and French and Francophone Studies from Earlham College in 2003. She lived in the mountains of Colorado and pursued her own sitting and walking practice in nature before finding Sanshin in 2015. She received the precepts in 2017 and joined the board of directors in June 2018. Iris collaborated with Sanshin’s work leader, Hosshin Shoaf, to complete outdoor artworks at Sanshin and currently oversees Sanshinji’s gardens. |
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Tōnen O'Connor
Secretary; also representing clergy outside Sanshin's lineage Committees: Development (chair), Finance, Facilities tonen.oconnor@sanshinji.org Tōnen is the first to occupy the board seat created last year for clergy outside of Sanshin's lineage. Directors asked to serve in this role bring experience in running a dharma center, contacts with other teachers and centers around the country and the world, and their own years of practice and study. Tōnen is the resident priest emerita of Milwaukee Zen Center, retiring after having led the center for more than 12 years. She received ordination from Tōzen Akiyama in 1994, dharma transmission in 1999 and in 2000 performed the ceremony of zuise at Eiheiji and Sojiji, head temples of the Soto school in Japan. She trained in Japan at Shogoji, Hosshinji and Hokyoji, and holds the rank of nitokyoshi within the Japanese Soto system as well as a four-year assignment askokusaifukyoshi. For more than seventeen years she has worked extensively with inmates within the Wisconsin correctional system, serving on the Wisconsin Department of Corrections Religious Practices Advisory Committee and giving a presentation on this work at a conference in Tokyo in 2008. Tōnen served as chair of the Committee on Interfaith Understanding, is past President of the Board of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association and, with Zuiko Redding of the Cedar Rapids Zen Center, is co-founder of the Great Sky Sesshin, held annually for eight years at Hokyoji Zen Practice Community in Minnesota. Prior to entering the Zen world, Tōnen had a 40-year career in the professional theater and was managing director of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater from 1974-1995. She holds a Bachelor’s degree with high honors from Swarthmore College and an M.A. From Tufts University. Tōnen is the editor of Buddhas Behind Bars, has a response included in The Hidden Lamp and her translation of Kodo Sawaki’s Commentary on The Song of Awakening was published in spring 2015. She was editor of and a contributing author to Milwaukee Zen Center: 30 Years of Reflections, published in August, 2015 and contributed a chapter to The Eightfold Path, published August 2016.. She has two sons, four grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and lives happily with two splendid cats. |
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Shōryu Bradley
Representing clergy within Sanshin's lineage Committee: Scholarship shoryu.bradley@sanshinji.org Shoryu is the first to occupy the board seat created last year for clergy within Sanshin's lineage. Directors asked to serve in this role bring their knowledge of Sanshin's practice and operations, connections with the sangha, and personal practice as well as their experience of running or functioning in other dharma centers. Shoryu was ordained as a Soto Zen priest in 2002 by Seirin Barbara Kohn at Austin Zen Center, and in 2004 he moved to Bloomington, Indiana to study with Shohaku Okumura and the Sanshin Zen Community. He has also trained at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California and at Sotoshu International Training Monastery angos held in the US and Japan. In 2010 he received dharma transmission from Okumura Roshi. He holds a B.S. in psychology from Texas A&M University, an M.Ed. in Rehabilitation Counseling from the University of Texas at Austin, and is a candidate for certification in Japanese psychology at the ToDo Institute of Vermont. He is working to establish Gyobutsuji, a mountain practice center in Arkansas offering monthly sesshins in the style of Okumura Roshi and Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. |
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Magnus Hōgen Hansson
Committee: Sangha Relations magnus.hansson@sanshinji.org Magnus became a member of the Board of Directors in August 2017. He received the precepts from Okumura Roshi in 2017 and lives and practices in Sweden. Magnus works as an associate professor in business at a university in Sweden, where he is primarily concerned with topics related to strategic planning and development as well as leadership and management. He also has an extensive background in martial arts, spanning more than 30 years of study of Goshinjutsu, Jujutsu, and Taihojutsu. He recevied Kudan in Goshinjutsu in 2017. |
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Gayle Salamon
Committees: Sangha Relations, Facilities gayle.salamon@sanshinji.org Gayle received the precepts at Sanshin in 2017. Over the past five years she has practiced with several sanghas in addition to Sanshin, and has served as fukuten at both Tassajara and Brooklyn Zen Center. Gayle is an associate professor of English and of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University where she works in phenomenology, queer and trans theory, feminist philosophy, 20th Century Continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, and disability studies. She has extensive experience with formal board service and steering committees in the academic and publishing realms. |
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Ying Joshin Studebaker
Committees: Development, Facilities ying.studebaker@sanshinji.org Ying received the precepts in 2017 at Sanshin after practicing zazen for 20 years. Her interest has been teaching and supporting others to do zazen in her work place as well as in the local communities in which she has lived. She sat weekly with the Columbus (OH) Zen Sangha, where she led meditation sessions, trained people to lead meditation, provided orientation to newcomers, and created and maintained a sangha listserv which started with twenty-some members and now has 290 members. Ying moved to the Philadelphia area about three years ago and started a new meditation group at a local library. She recently started a personal wellness practice group based on the same principle of zazen training that focus on daily activities. Prior to her retirement she was the director of employee wellness for Ohio State University. She holds a B.A. in Business Administration, a B.S. in Nursing, and a M.S. in Community Health Nursing and is an Advanced Practice Nurse in Community Health. Her professional experiences were mainly in developing new programs and designing operation protocols to delivery primary care for indigent populations and wellness services to the communities she served. She also wrote grants and raised money for indigent patient care, forming networks and collaborating with community partners to deliver more efficient medical care. |
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Gene Elias
Committees: Facilities (chair), Finance gene.elias@sanshinji.org Gene became a member of the board of directors in June of 2018. He holds a Masters degree in Finance and Quantitative Analysis, and is a retired chief information officer, having worked in the technology and apparel industries. He was also a senior executive at major firms in the consulting sector. Just prior to his retirement, Gene was the chief executive officer at a non-profit firm in southern California, where he helped several dozen other non-profits understand the complexities of technology and how best to utilize technology to expand their capacity and support their missions. Gene currently resides in southern Indiana, where he studies Soto Zen and practices zazen both at his home in the Yellow Wood State Forest and Sanshin. |