Insight into Mindfulness Faculty and Program Team

Matt Weiner

Senior Advisor for the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at Harvard Divinity School and Associate Dean of the Office of Religious Life at Princeton University

Matt oversees programs that include Hidden Chaplains, Faith Based Internships, and the Compassionate Medicine Fellowship. He is the Principal Investigator (with Stanley N. Katz) for the Religion and Forced Migration Initiative, funded in part by the Henry Luce Foundation. He leads Live Music Meditation and co-curates the Stairwell Gallery. He has been studying and practicing Buddhism for over 30 years. His Buddhist teachers include Samdech Maha Ghosananda, Sulak Siveraksa, Achan Kovit Khemananda, and Santikaro. He holds an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD from Union Theological Seminary.

Chris Berlin

Instructor in Spiritual Counseling and Buddhist Ministry, Harvard Divinity School; Faculty, Harvard Extension School; Denominational Counselor to Buddhist students, Harvard Divinity School

Chris Berlin is an instructor in spiritual counseling and Buddhist ministry at Harvard Divinity School, where he also serves as the counselor to Buddhist graduate students. His teaching ranges from counseling theory and practice, and contemplative approaches in clinical chaplaincy, to courses in mindfulness, resilience theory and Buddhism. He is also a faculty member at the Harvard Extension School where he teaches courses on mindfulness, resilience, positive psychology, compassion, and the contemplative arts.

Chris has previously served as a full-time chaplain at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where he received extensive experience teaching meditation and mindfulness to patients and medical clinicians alike, as well as integrating mindfulness into end-of-life care. He has also spent 10 years collaborating with others in the academic and clinical practitioner fields in North America around initiatives to integrate Buddhist approaches to clinical training, chaplaincy, and care of clinical providers which include East Asian monastics and institutions.

He was a presenter for the Meditation and Psychotherapy conference hosted by Harvard Medical School in 2018 and has spoken in numerous panels and events at Harvard Divinity school integrating mindfulness, trauma-sensitive approaches to contemplative practices, compassion, and consciousness, as well as convened panels on Buddhism, chaplaincy, and trauma at HDS. Chris has also co-led numerous retreats supporting the practice and care of hospital clinical staff, mental health professionals, and chaplains through contemplative approaches to self-care and sustainability in clinical work. He is a contributing author to the seminal work on Buddhist chaplaincy, The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work, and has written about resilience in spiritual loss due to adversity and trauma.

Chris is a lay teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and as the founder of the Clear Path Meditation community, offers regular meditation classes, workshops, retreats, and online programming in the Greater Boston area. Chris received his master of divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School and holds a degree in Buddhist and Hindu religions and psychology from UC Santa Barbara in California.

Ven. Priya Rakkhit Sraman

Buddhist Chaplain, Office of Spiritual and Religious Life, Emory University

Ven. Priya works as part of Emory's multifaith chaplaincy team to support the various spiritual, religious, and pastoral interests of the growing and diverse Buddhist and spiritual communities on campus. Some of his regular responsibilities include weekly meditation and community, semesterly off-campus retreat, religious/spiritual art workshops, caring for the Living Mandala Garden as a way of community building, and pastoral sessions for individual students and groups. Ven. Priya is also on the board of Interfaith Atlanta which is a non-profit for supporting local interfaith engagement and youth training. Ven. Priya has previously served as the Buddhist Chaplain at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ven. Priya is a Theravada Buddhist monastic ordained in 2003. Since then, he has lived, studied, and practiced for various lengths of time in different Buddhist communities in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Hong Kong, Myanmar, and China. He has an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, an MA in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hong Kong, and a BA from Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University in Thailand. Ven. Priya is originally from Chattogram, Bangladesh, and currently lives in Atlanta.

Natalia Martínez Muñoz Potter, LCSW

Associate Director of the Counseling Service at Vassar College

Natalia is the Associate Director of the Counseling Service at Vassar College, where she counsels students from diverse racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds utilizing both psychodynamic approaches and DBT. In addition, at Vassar, she trains the next generation of psychotherapists as a senior supervisor to MSW students and Post-Doctoral Candidates. Natalia is also in private practice in New York.

Natalia was born and raised in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador, in South America, and from a young age, she was interested in how culture, family, and the environment shape who we are and who we want to become. Her quest to understand cultures, traditions, and systems led her to learn languages, live, study, and grow on three continents.

Thus, Natalia approaches her psychotherapeutic work from a multicultural lens, helping you make sense of what brought you to this moment as a base to understand where you want to go and support you as you get there.

Natalia trained as a psychologist in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and received her Master of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania where she found her passion for working with college students as a trainee at the Counseling and Psychological Services of UPENN. Natalia received the 2015 Clinical Excellence Award from the Pennsylvania Society for Clinical Social Work and is an American Psychological Association Division 39 Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology Multicultural Concerns Scholar. She also completed post-graduate education training at the William Alanson White Institute in NYC for the treatment of eating disorders, addictions and compulsions.

Monica Sanford

Assistant Dean for Multireligious Ministry, Harvard Divinity School

Monica Sanford joined HDS in September 2021. Monica comes to HDS from the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she became one of only two Buddhists in North America to lead a multireligious life department at a college or university. Monica is one of the first full-trained Buddhist practical theologians in the United States, having earned her PhD in practical theology from Claremont School of Theology. Monica also holds an undergraduate degree in design from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MDiv from University of the West. Monica is an ordained Buddhist lay minister in a Chan lineage and trained as a Buddhist chaplain. Her recent book, Kalyāṇamitra: A Buddhist Model for Spiritual Care (January 2021), is the first textbook for Buddhist chaplains.

Jonathan Makransky

Multireligious Ministry Initiatives Coordinator, Harvard Divinity School

Jonathan coordinates programs offered by the Office of Ministry Studies to support the success of students enrolled in the MDiv program, particularly those from non-Christian backgrounds. This includes the Buddhist Ministry Initiative among other projects. Prior to joining HDS in 2022, Jonathan worked as the interreligious program coordinator in the Office of Campus Ministry at Georgetown University. Jonathan holds an MTS in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School and has extensive practice and mentorship experience within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and in interfaith contexts.