Current Board Members
Leilani Bush (she/her)
Interim Executive Director
Leilani Bush is a mother, wife, sister, steward of the planet, and conscious manifestation of joy. Professionally, she is an evidential medium, tarot card reader, Reiki practitioner, teacher, and spiritual wellness coach. Her life’s mission is to help herself and others heal, learn, grow, and spiritually evolve to live their truth. Her practice (which she calls medicine) helps others identify and remove obstacles to their healing while holding space for them to re-integrate and restore their connection to Source. She accomplishes this by channeling messages from spirit guides and ancestors to understand the story of one’s past, give clarity and insight into the present, and illuminate a path to their future. She studied mediumship in Stansted, England at Arthur Findlay College.
Hailing from Washington, DC, Leilani has over 25 years corporate experience in a myriad of industries including finance, healthcare, technology, and the energy sector. As a Change Manager and Project Manager, the bulk of her work focused on organizational change, process improvement, workforce planning & development as well as corporate communications. Previously, she served as the southeast regional board member for the Center for Energy Workforce Development.
Leilani’s personal joy comes from spending time with family, reading, perusing farmers markets, hiking, gardening, dancing, and communing with all beings.
Leilani  joined our board in July 2024.
Peter Williams (he/him)
Director, Chair of the Board, and Cofounder
Peter has practiced meditation for 23 years in the Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. He has taught meditation since 2003 and has completed the Community Dharma Leader training through Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Peter also practices as a psychotherapist, specializing in bringing mindfulness and other spiritual perspectives to healing emotional distress. In addition to teaching retreats and dedicated practitioner groups, Peter has taught mindfulness to diverse audiences, from Colorado juvenile justices to school teachers to environmental gatherings.
As a scientist, he worked for 18 years as an environmental educator for Massachusetts Audubon Society, a wildlife biologist and lecturer in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Vermont, and as a consulting ecologist for the Nature Conservancy and the U. S. Forest Service. He served as a board member of the Vermont Wetlands Association. Peter has a special passion for teaching meditation in nature and for bringing spiritual perspectives to advocating for the environment.
Howard Evergreen (he/him)
Director, Vice-Chair, and Treasurer
Howard Evergreen came by his last name when he and his wife Janet were married 45 years ago, and they chose it to represent their relationship to nature. They have one biological daughter and two adopted sons. Howard graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania because he liked numbers and believed there was good to be done through business. This turned out to be harder than he thought. He used his business skills as the Director of the Fluvanna/Louisa Housing Foundation for 25 years, a nonprofit located just outside Charlottesville, VA. He has also been on the boards of many community organizations including the local housing authority, the community action agency and Wild Virginia, a non profit that keeps the Forest Service on their toes . In addition to RMERC, he is also the treasurer of a small local nonprofit, Open Hands. Howard has been studying and practicing meditation for 40 years, first with Dhyani Ywahoo and the Sunray Meditation Society. Then he studied with Shinzen Young, also helping to organize retreats, even cooking when needed. He enjoys hiking, reading, Zumba, cooking, gardening, qigong, meditation, taking care of friends and once in awhile doing nothing.
Howard joined the Board in March of 2022.
Emerson James (they/them)
Director
Emerson James has spent a decade practicing homemaking in Cache Valley, Utah, and the surrounding Bear River Mountains. They are called to the particular role of spiritual practice and action to facilitate the transformation of cultures and systems of oppression. A person who has had a diversity of jobs – field ecologist, artisan cheese maker, project manager – Emerson tends to focus not on the what, but the how. For them, bringing great care and beauty to the small details, with an eye towards the whole, builds the foundations and containers for individuals, organizations, and communities to reimagine and give form to alternative systems of being. A dedicated meditator, they continue to be humbled by the journey to see themselves and the world clearly. They have a BS in Environmental Stewardship from McPherson College and an MS in English with an emphasis in Creative Nonfiction from Utah State University. Their queer, ecological, dharma, and writing interests are currently being expressed in an ongoing project exploring the liberation possible when an eco-queer lens is applied to the Jataka Tales.
Emerson joined our board in July, 2024.
Bill Penuel (he/him)
Director, Secretary
William R. (Bill) Penuel lives in Boulder, Colorado with his family and works as a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a lifelong Buddhist practitioner who has been part of Tibetan and Theravadan traditions. Currently, he is enrolled in the Community Dharma Leaders training program at Spirit Rock in California. At CU Boulder, Bill is part of the Institute of Cognitive Science, School of Education, and the Renee Crown Wellness Institute. Part of his research focuses on how contemplative practices and critical inquiry can support educators in cultivating more compassionate learning environments and schools, particularly for racially minoritized, LGBTQIA2S+, and multilingual youth and adults. He enjoys running, cooking and eating with friends and family, and long retreats.
Bill joined our board in July 2024.
Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray (she/her)
Director
Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray is a professor and chair of environmental studies at Cal Poly Humboldt, in what is known as Arcata, California, on Wiyot land. She works at the intersection of social justice and climate emotions, particularly among youth activists and in higher education. An environmental humanist with a BA in Religious Studies from Swarthmore College, an MA in American Studies from UT-Austin, and a PhD in Environmental Sciences, Studies and Policy from the University of Oregon, Dr. Ray draws on an eclectic range of disciplines and epistemologies in service of climate justice. She is the author of two books, The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture (Arizona, 2013), on the emotion of disgust in environmentalism and its implications for social justice, and A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet (California, 2020), an existential toolkit for the climate generation. She has co-edited multiple volumes bridging social justice and environmentalism, including Latinx Environmentalisms: Justice, Place, and the Decolonial, Disability Studies & the Environmental Humanities, and The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World. In addition to serving on the board for RMERC, Ray is on the scientific advisory board for the Climate Mental Health Network and speaks and publishes widely on the role of emotions in climate advocacy. Ray has taught mindfulness courses on climate and activism, and is a certified mindfulness teacher through the UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center.
Sarah joined our board in February 2025.
Nikayla Jefferson (she/her)
Director
Nikayla Jefferson (she/her) is a writer, poet, organizer, and ongoing curious and concerned observer of this human experience. She’s currently the program manager and writer for One Earth Sangha. She’s a two-time graduate of UC Santa Barbara and holds a master’s degree in Political Science. Nikayla worked as an organizer and writer for the Sunrise Movement, and co-founded the San Diego chapter. Nikayla’s writing has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Nation, and others. She’s a contributing writer for Yale Climate Connections and training as a Buddhist eco-chaplain. She describes her Buddhist lineage as a fun and funky mix of Insight and Plum Village.
Nikayla joined our board in February 2025.
Dale Gaar (he/him)
Director
Dale began meditating over fifty years ago. His last 10 years of meditation practice have been in a Rinzai Zen tradition in which he has been ordained. Dale is an attorney and lives in Boulder. His law practice involves representing individuals with physical injuries or civil rights claims and an ongoing commitment to nonprofit board service. Dale has found RMERC to be a deeply nourishing place for spiritual practice in a remarkable natural setting.
Dale joined our board in February 2025.
Emeritus Board Members
Johann Robbins
Director Emeritus & Cofounder
Johann teaches Dharma and meditation in the Insight/Vipassana tradition. Johann has been meditating since 1974 and was asked to teach in 2008. He completed the Community Dharma Leader teacher training program at Spirit Rock, and also has a strong interest in Non-dual practice. In 2002 Johann founded Impermanent Sangha, and has taught and guided Insight meditation retreats in nature and wilderness since then, including backpacking, camping, canoeing, and rafting.
Johann started backpacking as a teenager, and deepened his spiritual journey on long solo wilderness trips in his teens and twenties. His passion is teaching spiritual practice in nature, and he has guided and taught wilderness retreats in various traditions for over 25 years, including being a Vision Quest guide in the late 1990’s. Johann is also a successful entrepreneur, and has been a general contractor, a business development and marketing consultant with a focus on non-profits, and has also owned and restored historic buildings.
Johann served the board from 2016 until April 2024.
Kritee (Kanko), PhD (she/her)
Director Emeritus & Cofounder
Kritee (dharma name Kanko) is a Climate Scientist, Buddhist Zen priest, Educator & Founding Spiritual Director of Boundless in Motion, another 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Boulder (Colorado). She is an ordained teacher in the Rinzai Zen lineage of Cold Mountain and a co-founder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. She has served as faculty for courses or retreats at the intersection of climate crisis, racial justice, trauma healing and spirituality for many organizations including One Earth Sangha, Al Gore’s Climate Reality, Stanford University, World Council of Churches, San Francisco Zen Center, Mind & Life Institute and Lama Foundation. She has served as a leading scientist in the Climate Smart Agriculture program at Environmental Defense Fund for 12 years. Her experience is that identifying and releasing our personal and ecological grief in presence of a loving community is necessary; that helps us unlock our gifts and serve our communities. Her articles and interviews have appeared in the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, Harvard Health, Yale Climate Connections, California Public Radio. Please see her personal website here.Â
David Loy, PhD
Director Emeritus & Cofounder
David’s practice tradition is Japanese Zen tradition. He began Zen practice in Hawaii in 1971 with Yamada Koun and Robert Aitken, and continued with Koun-roshi in Japan, where he lived for almost twenty years. He was authorized to teach in 1988 and has led retreats and workshops nationally and internationally in places such as at Spirit Rock, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Omega Institute, Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, Terre d’Eveil in Paris, and Dharma Gate in Budapest.
David is a professor of Asian and Comparative Philosophy (now retired). In June 2014 he received an honorary PhD from his Alma Mater, Carleton College, for his writings on socially engaged Buddhism. In April 2016 David returned his honorary degree to the College, to protest the decision of the Board of Trustees not to divest from fossil fuel investments.
David is a well-known writer, whose books and articles have been translated into many languages. His most recent book is Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis, and he is co-editor of A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency (both Wisdom Publications). His writing focuses primarily on the encounter between Buddhism and modernity: what each can learn from the other. He is especially concerned about social and ecological issues. David’s writings, podcasts, and videos are available at davidloy.org.
David served on the board from 2016 until December 2023.
Russ Hullet
Director Emeritus
Russ has been involved with real estate for over 35 years investing in residential, retail, office, light industrial, and vacation properties in Rhode Island and the western states. He began with historical restorations of multi-family Victorians wearing a tool belt and acting as his own general contractor, then moved to oversight of projects and then to partnering with others as a passive investor in real estate and other sectors.
He was a partner in Coffee Haus in the late nineties, which owned specialty coffee shops in the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport and surrounding cities while licensing franchises in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.
Russ has practiced meditation for 35 years in the Vedanta and Insight traditions. He attended graduate school in psychology at both Naropa University and the California Institute of Integral Studies. Having lived with a chronic illness for the majority of his adult life, he is passionate about harnessing the power of meditation to heal the physical body as well as the mind.
Russ enjoys playing fingerstyle guitar. His love of contemporary folk music led to the creation of Living Room Live in 2013, a house concert series where he hosts, along with his wife, nationally recognized singer-songwriters in their living room.
Russ served on the board from May 2017 to August 2021.
Jean Leonard, Ph.D. (she/her)
Director Emeritus
Jean is a licensed psychologist, a Certified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher, and a trained Buddhist Ecochaplain in private practice in Louisville, Colorado. She teaches mindfulness classes and mentors mindfulness teachers in training through Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program.   Jean has practiced yoga for over 30 years and vipassana meditation (in the Theravada tradition) since 2003, and holds the Dharma as a sacred compass that guides her personal and professional life. Some of her primary teachers have included James Baraz, Gil Fronsdal, Thanissara and Kittisaro. She views kindness and self-compassion as essential medicine for these tender and uncertain times. In her teaching and mindfulness-informed therapeutic work, she loves supporting individuals in meeting the circumstances of their lives and themselves with more gentleness, grace and good humor. She has a particular interest in offering emotional and spiritual support to individuals and communities impacted by the environmental and ecological crises of our times, and practice related to aging, illness and dying.Â
Jean has a lifelong connection to the earth through gardening, farming, backpacking and cloud gazing. She feels a deep calling to support efforts in the service of Joanna Macy’s Great Turning.  She is honored to have joined the board in 2020 and to support ongoing community building and diversity, equity and inclusion at RMERC and in the Ecodharma community.
Rocky Mountain Ecodharma operates with the help of many volunteers. Many more will be needed: To volunteer please send an email to [email protected]
Jesse Dow (he/him)
Executive Director
Jesse Dow is a Buddhist Eco-Chaplain, a priest in training in the Soto Zen tradition, a father, and a restorative circle keeper. He worked In the Boulder Valley School District for 12 years as a Family Literacy Site Manager and another 3 years as a preschool community liaison. He has been practicing meditation for 33 years in the Soto Zen tradition, first as a student of Kobun Shino Otogawa Roshi, and then as a student of Shoho Michael Newhall Roshi, with whom he was ordained. More recently, over the last six years, Jesse has also practiced in the Theravada and Chan traditions, with Kittisaro and Thanissara. Jesse continues to practice at Jikoji Zen Center in Northern California, where he spends one to two months per year in residency.
At a young age, Jesse lived briefly and attended school in San Cristobal De Las Casas, in South Mexico. As an adult, Jesse lived for a short while in Managua, Nicaragua, doing political reconciliation work between liberal and conservative parties that had fought against each other in the Nicaraguan Revolution and in the Contra War. Jesse is a fluent Spanish speaker, and much of his heart resides with the hispanic culture.
Jesse is a 4th generation Coloradan, and loves these mountains and these plains as family. It is his sacred lifelong duty to protect and support all of our beloved human and non-human relatives.
