SPARKS

Lauren Elizabeth Clare is the co-founder of Living Earth Co-Creative and a facilitator of the Living Earth Eco-Innovation Challenge. She is a poet, educator, and Theory U practitioner, participating in the Presencing Institute for over 5 years as a u.lab hub host and content generator. Lauren studied holistic education, holistic land management, and lived in an old growth forest for many years. She has a deep interest in eco-wisdom for articulating and cultivating the shift towards the participatory paradigm. With a foundation in the performing arts, Lauren enjoys cultivating dynamic teams and participatory learning experiences. You can read Lauren’s thesis on Participatory Learning and many other writings about artisans of education at laurenelizabethclare.medium.com. Lauren is based in southern Oregon, USA

Richard Livingston is Program Director of Education and Community at the Center for Process Studies. Formerly the Executive Director of the Cobb Institute (2021-2025), he received his PhD in 2015 from Claremont Graduate University, where he specialized in Philosophy of Religion and Theology. He taught as an adjunct instructor in philosophy and religious studies at four colleges in Southern California from 2011-2020, and has worked in IT since the early 1990s. He holds a Master’s Degree in Theology from the University of Chicago (2005) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Near Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University (2001).

Kaeti MacNeil is an American artist working at the intersection of painting and animation. Her award-winning film Carasoul: a Portrait in Nth Dimensions (2022) was named Best Animated Short at the Artists Forum Festival of the Moving Image in New York City. Her work visualizes temporal, immaterial sensations and perceptions as spatially material extensions of the body, emerging through a process of becoming. Kaeti earned her BFA with Distinction from OCAD University in Toronto, specializing in Drawing & Painting: Digital Painting and Expanded Animation. Her fascination with human origins, particularly our gifts of individual personality, self-awareness, and intelligence, drives her inspired pursuits through art history, cognitive science, and theoretical physics. Her work has been exhibited in Toronto, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.

Jay McDaniel, PhD is Willis Holmes Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Hendrix College in Arkansas, and founder of the website Open Horizons, which focuses on exploring a process outlook on life and way of living in the world. Active in the development of process thought in China, he is a consultant to the China Project of the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California, and a member of the advisory board of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China. His books include With Roots and Wings: Christianity in an Age of Ecology and Dialogue, Living from the Center: Spirituality in an Age of Consumerism; and Gandhi’s Hope: Learning from Other Religions as a Path to Peace.

Jared is an independent scholar based out of Chicago with academic interests in philosophy of religion, Islamic studies, comparative religion, metamodern spirituality, and interfaith dialogue. His work in these areas seeks to offer robust responses to issues of inter-religious conflict, contemporary nihilism, and the “meaning crisis,” among other things. Jared graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2018 with degrees in religion and Scandinavian studies, and currently works for the Center for Process Studies and the Psychedelic Medicine Association. 

Grace Papineau-Couture is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist from Edmonton, Alberta, currently based in Chicago, Illinois. Grace’s work takes interest in areas of acoustic ecology, ecological disaster, ritual and folk ways of knowing. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in studio practice from Columbia College Chicago, and currently serves as Communications Assistant at the Center for Process Studies. 

Kathleen Reeves is a writer, artist and published poet. She holds a Master of Divinity in interfaith theology, and is an ordained interfaith minister. She has been active in interfaith peace, and is a member of the Inland Valley Interfaith Working Group for Middle East Peace. She is the President of the Upland Interfaith Council, and has held leadership positions in Unitarian Universalists congregations. Her community interfaith ministry led her to volunteer with Syrian refugees as they settled into their new country. Her deep connection with one special family is captured in her series of stories she wrote for the Huffington Post. She is a student of Japanese tea ceremony through the international Chado Urasenke Tankokai associations of the Urasenke school in Kyoto, Japan. Kathleen has also trained in Restorative Practice, and she follows an earth-based religion and belongs to The Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids. She is working on ways to build a process -relational community through small group ministry.

Xinlin (Vivian) Song is an educator, writer, and community activator. Her work focuses on forming cross-sector Glocal collaborations to create meaningful dialogues that ignite paradigm shifts toward an ecological civilization between China and the world. Xinlin serves as a board member of The Cobb Institute, and the youth program director for The Institute of Post-Modern Development of China, and the education director at Yunhe Centre, a community-based environment learning center. Yunhecentre.com Her current interests involve storytelling and education with emerging China’s eco-communities, uncovering the potential for a new story that promotes mutually beneficial relationships between and beyond the human world.