Berthe Jansen is Assistant Professor of Tibetan Studies at Leiden University. She is a scholar of Buddhist Studies, specializing in Tibetan social and religious history. She lived in India for five years and graduated from the Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translator Programme in Dharmashala in 2005. Thereafter she obtained a BA in Indology at Leiden, an MPhil in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at Oxford, and a PhD degree in Buddhist Studies back in Leiden. Jansen had a Dutch government grant (NWO) to research the relationship between Buddhism and law in pre-modern Tibet (2016-2022), prior to her appointment as tenured staff at Leiden University.

She is currently the PI of the ERC-funded project: Locating Literature, Lived Religion, and Lives in the Himalayas: The Van Manen Collection (2023-2028). Her monograph The Monastery Rules: Tibetan Monastic Organization in Pre-modern Tibet came out in 2018 with University of California Press. In 2023, her first Buddhism-inspired children's book Don't Kill the Bugs came out with Bala Publications. She has worked as an interpreter and translator of Buddhist Tibetan since 2004.

Ted Lipman's career has spanned over 40 years as an Asianist: in diplomacy, philanthropy, academia and culture.

One of a handful of Canadian students in China during the Cultural Revolution, after completing studies at Peking University in 1976, Ted embarked on a 35 year diplomatic career.

Highlights include appointments as Canadian Consul General in Shanghai,  Minister/DCM  in Beijing, Director/HOM of Canada's trade office in Taipei, Director General for North Asia at Global Affairs HQ and Ted's last diplomatic assignment, Canadian ambassador to both North and South Korea. Ted was also a visiting diplomatic fellow at the UBC Institute of Asian Research (Korean Studies).

Subsequent to his diplomatic career, for almost a decade, Ted served as CEO of the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation, a leading HK based philanthropy supporting  culture, academia and Buddhism. He currently is the Director of a consultancy and design firm based in Hong Kong.

Kurtis R. Schaeffer is the Frances Myers Ball Professor of Religion and the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is a student of Buddhist history and culture, with a special interest in the spiritual literature of Tibet and the Himalayas. He is the author or editor of nine books, including the largest anthology of Tibetan literature in English and, most recently, a translation of the life of the Buddha. Schaeffer co-directs the half-century old Tibetan Buddhist studies graduate program at the University of Virginia and, with Martien Halvorson-Taylor, directs the Global Religion Lab at UVA.

Andrew Quintman is a scholar of Buddhist traditions in Tibet and the Himalaya, and Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Wesleyan University. He writes, teaches, and lectures about Buddhist literature and history, sacred geography and pilgrimage, and visual cultures of the wider Himalaya. His work addresses the intersections of Buddhist literary production, circulation, and reception; the reciprocal influences of textual and visual narratives; and the formation of religious subjectivities and institutional identities. His book, The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet's Great Saint Milarepa (Columbia University Press 2014), won the American Academy of Religion's 2014 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, the 2015 Heyman Prize for outstanding scholarship from Yale University, and received honorable mention for the 2016 E. Gene Smith Book Prize at the Association of Asian Studies. In 2010, his new English translation of the Life of Milarepa was published by Penguin Classics. He is currently writing a history of Drakar Taso Monastery that explores Buddhist religious and literary culture in the borderlands of Tibet and Nepal. He also co-directs a project on the Life of the Buddha through visual and literary materials associated with Tāranātha's seventeenth-century Jonang Phuntsokling Monastery in western Tibet.

Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (PhD, University of Virginia) is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author, editor, or translator of a number of works, including Prisoners of Shangri-La, The Madman's Middle Way, Buddhist Scriptures, and The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (with Robert Buswell). In 2000 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Lauran Hartley (PhD, Indiana University) is Tibetan Studies Librarian for the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University and occasionally serves as Adjunct Lecturer in Tibetan Literature for the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. She has also taught courses on Tibetan literature and religion at Indiana and Rutgers universities. In addition to co-editing the book Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change (Duke University Press, 2008) and serving as Inner Asian Book Review Editor for the Journal of Asian Studies, she has also published several literary translations and articles on Tibetan intellectual history and discourse from the eighteenth century to present. Since joining Columbia full-time in 2007, and as co-founder of the Tibetan Resources Working Group, Lauran has worked especially to revise the Library of Congress Tibetan Romanization Table, assist in coordinating Tibetan Studies metadata practices, and initiate Tibetan archival and digital preservation projects. She also jointly serves the University of Toronto Libraries through a cooperative agreement.

Daniel is an experienced marketing professional with over a decade of insights gathered from corporate and consumer marketing executive roles working for multinationals such as Canon, and large financial firms such as Westpac. While pursuing his marketing career, Daniel continued to foster his life long interest in Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibetan language, and its literature. This has taken him across Australia, America, India, Nepal, and Tibet to pursue a deeper understanding of Buddhist theory and practice with masters from the living tradition. Daniel also reads Sanskrit and Tibetan and has a PhD in Buddhist Philosophy. He is currently a Publisher at Wisdom Publications.

Nikko Odiseos came from a career in the information management sector of the technology industry, specializing in content management and enterprise search, finishing that phase of his career at Microsoft. He worked closely with a wide range of publishers on their business strategies around digitization and dissemination. Prior to that he had studied on and subsequently was on staff on Antioch's Buddhist Studies Program in Bodhgaya, India for several years, immersing himself in many diverse Buddhist traditions.

Nikko has been the President of Shambhala Publications since 2010, overseeing its acquisition of several other publishers including Snow Lion Publications. He sits on the board of several other Buddhist organizations. Nikko lives in Colorado and spends 1-2 months in Asia every year.

Lisa Schubert has spent most of her career either directing, developing, or coordinating projects.  She recently stepped down as VP, Cathedral Programming & External Relations at the Cathedral of St John the Divine (2008 – 2023) in New York, where she was charged with creating an institutional framework for funding, staffing, and implementing a multi-disciplinary arts program and an ongoing menu of events and projects of civic engagement in the humanities. Prior to joining the Cathedral, Lisa worked for the Rubin Museum of Art, which she joined as the first staff member at the inception in 1998. She worked closely with the founders to refine and develop the original concept and put together the "start-up" team. Her career has involved most aspects of cultural administration including policy, strategic planning, public education, programming, operations, administration, communications, and development.  Lisa also serves on the boards of Food & Water Watch, a national organization, with international chapters, founded to protect our food, water and climate; and the Early Music Foundation, which fosters public understanding and appreciation of western culture through historically-informed performances of music from the 11th through the 18th centuries.

In 2012 Charles G. Lief JD became President of Naropa University in Boulder, the first Buddhist Inspired liberal arts university in the West, retiring as President Emeritus in mid-2025. Chuck has a fifty-year affiliation with Naropa—first as a student from the age of 19 of Naropa's founder, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher, the late Chogyam Trungpa; as lawyer for the university; and later as board chair. Naropa's BA and MA curriculum is built on a foundation of deep training in the contemplative practices of mindfulness and compassion, with an emphasis on experiential learning and service.   

Prior to assuming his current role, Chuck led several innovative and successful social enterprises, including the Greyston Foundation, founded by the Zen teacher Roshi Bernie Glassman, and Amida Care in New York City, the largest HIV/AIDS health care HMO in the country, providing essential housing, health care, and employment to thousands of homeless and low-income people in the Northeast.  He has helped create in excess of $200 million in low-income housing together with social enterprises, child care and support services.

He has served in leadership capacities on numerous boards.  He currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of the Lion's Roar Foundation and recently retired as board chair of the homeless services nonprofit Bridge House. He is a board member of the Holistic Life Foundation, the innovative Center for Cartoon Studies, and was chair of the board of the Social Enterprise Alliance. He is currently an advisor to the Vermont Community Loan Fund.  Chuck has been married for 50 years to the Buddhist teacher and author Judy Lief, and they are parents of 2 daughters and grandparents of 4.

Gedun Rabsal is a Senior Lecturer within the Department of Central Eurasian Studies. Born and raised in Amdo, he studied at Tibetan monasteries in Tibet and India. Gedun Rabsal worked as a research fellow at Central University for Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, Varanasi and as editor of the Tibetan language newspaper Tibet Times. Gedun Rabsal's research focus is the history of Tibetan literature and Tibetan language, and he is the author of several books, including a history of Tibetan literature. He is a very active BDRC database user and has collaborated with a number of our current board members on research, translation, and publishing projects in the past.

Sebastian Nehrdich is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Tohoku University. He completed his PhD in Computational Linguistics at the University of Düsseldorf, co-supervised by Oliver Hellwig and Kurt Keutzer. He holds an MA in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hamburg. His work integrates digital philology, Buddhist textual analysis, and machine learning. He serves as Director of the Dharmamitra project that was founded at the Berkeley AI Research Lab (BAIR), has managed the ML infrastructure of the ChronBMM project, and has led the development of the BuddhaNexus platform 2018-2023, now continued as DharmaNexus.

sebastian-nehrdich.com

Luciana Novaes has been involved with the Khyentse Foundation (KF) for over 20 years. She is the KF country representative for Brazil, serves on the KF Scholarships Committee, and advises the KF Investment Committee. In her capacity as KF's Major Grants Supervisor she has a long and productive relationship with BDRC prior to joining the BDRC Board of Directors in late 2025.

Luciana has spent most of her professional career working with global banks in corporate finance. She has also pioneered environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices as a researcher, teacher, and advisor, helping corporate clients to assess risks related to climate change, natural resource constraints, and broader ESG factors. She has an MSc in energy planning from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (COPPE- UFRJ) and in environmental technology from Imperial College of London. She also holds an MBA in international finance from Pace University, NY and a bachelor's degree in statistics from ENCE in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Gray Tuttle is presently the Leila Hadley Luce Assistant Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies in Columbia University's department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. He studies the history of twentieth century Sino-Tibetan relations as well as Tibet's relations with the China-based Manchu Qing empire. The role of Tibetan Buddhism in these historical relations is central to all his research.

For the modern period, in his Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (Columbia UP, 2005), he examines the failure of nationalism and race-based ideology to maintain the territory of the former Qing empire as integral to the Chinese nation-state. Instead, a new sense of Pan-Asian Buddhism was critical to Chinese efforts to hold on to Tibetan regions (one quarter of China's current territory).

His current research project focuses on the support that Tibetan Buddhist institutions in Amdo have received from the both Central Tibet and China from the seventeenth to the twentieth century and how this support, along with economic growth in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, has fueled expansion and renewal of these institutions into the contemporary period.

Other long term writing projects include co-editing Sources of Tibetan Tradition for the series Introduction to Asian Civilizations and co-writing Tibet: History, Society, and Culture, with Columbia University Press. In 2004-2005, he was a postdoctoral associate of Yale University's Council on East Asian Studies and lecturer in the Department of History. He received his PhD in Inner Asian Studies at Harvard University in 2002.

Shelley Rubin is co-founder and Co-Chair of the Board of RMA (Rubin Museum of Art) which opened October, 2004. RMA, a museum dedicated to the art of the Himalayas, is located in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. The dream to found a museum grew out of Shelley's and her husband Donald's desire to share their art collection with the public and the belief that its study would offer a powerful means of revealing universal truths of shared human experience.

Prior to building the museum Mrs. Rubin, together with her husband, started a foundation with the aim of supporting innovative efforts to transform society's institutions and make them more responsible, while at the same time empowering individuals to develop their full potential. One of the first projects of the Foundation was the creation of Himalayan Art Resources, a website designed to catalog and to exhibit on line Himalayan art from collections around the world. This site is now a comprehensive and definitive archive encompassing the art of the entire Himalayan region.

Mrs. Rubin is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (Thirteen/WNET, WLIW21, HD, Kids, World, and Create), the largest producer of cultural and arts programming in America. She also serves on the Board of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC). Mrs. Rubin recently rotated off the Board of Trustees of the Interfaith Center of New York. She is a member of the Global Philanthropists Circle (GPC) and the Wealth and Giving Forum.

Timothy J. McNeill has been president, CEO, and publisher of Wisdom Publications, a leading non-profit publisher of books focusing on Buddhism, since 1988. Mr. McNeill earned a Masters in Public Policy (MPP) degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1979 after serving three years in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan.

From 1983 to 1986 Mr. McNeill was Vice President of Corporate Development for International Data Group, the world's largest provider of information about information technology. From 1978-1983, he worked with Arthur D. Little, Inc in international development planning . Immediately prior to coming to Wisdom Publications he was Associate Issues Director for the Dukakis Presidential Campaign.

Currently, Mr. McNeill also serves on the board of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts. Mr. McNeill's work at Wisdom reflects his longstanding commitment to the survival and propagation of Buddhist literature and culture through publication. He sees BDRC as an integral part of a greater vision of the development of quality translations of Buddhist books.

David Lunsford is the founder and executive director of the Bodhi Foundation, a private non-profit foundation dedicated to assembling conditions that benefit beings.

David received training in computer engineering and advanced technology from the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1980s. He then spent 18 years in the personal computer industry. Many of those years were spent at Dell Computer leading various engineering, and advanced technology teams.

Joining the TBRC board in 1999, David believed in the usefulness of applying emerging imaging, communications, and network technologies to the preservation and cataloging of the profound Tibetan traditions. Organizing and cataloging this library through Gene Smith's profound understanding of literary relationships and contexts, was a perfect application. Vast storage, databases, and networks now allow the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center to present these rare and valuable resources in new ways. It is David's wish you will join us, through sponsorship and support of this incredible center of knowledge and access.

May all beings benefit.

Richard Lanier is president emeritus of the Asian Cultural Council and a founding trustee of the Trust for Mutual Understanding in New York.

After receiving his M.A. at New York University, he taught art history at the University of California in Santa Barbara and at The Johns Hopkins University.

In 1972, he joined The JDR 3rd Fund, a foundation established by John D. Rockefeller 3rd to promote cultural exchange between Asia and the United States. In 1975, he was appointed director of the Fund and in 1980 became president of the Asian Cultural Council, a public foundation that continues the Fund's Asian-American exchange program. The Council's headquarters are in New York and has offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Manila. The Trust for Mutual Understanding is a foundation that supports cultural and environmental exchanges between the United States, Russia, and other countries in Eastern and Central Europe.

Lanier is on the boards of the Rubin Museum of Art, the Japan Society, and the Salisbury Forum and is also a member of the Asian Art Advisory Committee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, he was a member of the President's Cultural Property Advisory Committee.

In 1982 Patricia earned a Masters Degree in Psychology from Antioch West University in San Francisco, followed by a two-year post master's Certificate in Psychotherapy from the Psychotherapy Institute in Berkeley, Ca. She was in the private practice of psychotherapy until 1995 in the Bay area, serving also as the Clinical Director of an alcohol treatment service for drinking drivers, and Director of an MA level training program focused on alcohol counseling. She is a founding member of the Milton H. Erickson Institute of the Bay Area, which provides training and consultation to professionals and graduate students in mental health, medicine, nursing and social work. She is a licensed Marriage and Family Counselor. Currently consulting for Globalvest Mgmt. Co., St. Thomas, she also serves as President of the Peter Gruber Foundation, a US non-profit. With philanthropic activities in the Virgin Islands the Foundation also awards annual international prizes in the sciences: Cosmology, Genetics, Neuroscience, as well as Justice and Women's Rights. She is a former Trustee and Secretary, Board of Trustees, Antilles School, St. Thomas, VI; currently an Advisory Council Member of the ABA Center for International Human Rights of the American Bar Association; she serves as a Governing Council Member of the International League for Human Rights at the UN. This is her first year as a board member of TBRC.

Derek met Gene Smith in 1998 and they immediately became close friends and collaborators. Derek assisted Gene in making his vision a reality by creating the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center. Derek served as Founding Board Member and Treasurer from its inception in 1999 until 2014 when he was forced to resign temporarily for health reasons.

In 1982, Derek earned a B.A. degree in the Comparative Study of Religion from Harvard College with a focus on Buddhism, including the study of Sanskrit and Tibetan languages, primarily under the guidance of Prof. Masatoshi Nagatomi and including studies with Prof. Daniel Ingalls and Prof. Robert Thurman. In 1989, Derek earned a M.B.A. degree from Columbia University. He then served as CFO for various companies and not-for-profit organizations for about 25 years, specializing in financial management and strategic planning. He is now a consultant focusing in those two areas.

Derek was a student of the late Chogyam Trunpga Rinpoche, a lineage holder of the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages and a leading force in the transmission of these traditional Buddhist lineages to the West. Derek also studied at Naropa University and worked with the Nalanda Translation Committee, founded by Chogyam Trungpa. In 2004, he founded and continues to lead Rime Shedra NYC, which is dedicated to the advanced study of the core classical practice and philosophical texts of the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions and is modelled around the traditional Shedra curriculum. In 2009, he co-founded and continues to co-lead Westchester Buddhist Center, which is dedicated to preserving and making accessible the unique system of teachings and practices transmitted by Trungpa Rinpoche.

Tulku Thondup Rinpoche was born in Golok, Eastern Tibet. At the age of four he was recognized as the rebirth of a celebrated scholar and adept of the famed Dodrupchen Monastery in Golok.

Tulku Thondup Rinpoche is the author of over a dozen books and Presiding Officer of The Buddhayana Foundation: 204 Spring Street, Marion MA.

Tudeng Nima Rinpoche (Alak Zenkar Rinpoche) was born in 1943 in Pal Lhagang, Sichuan, China. He has made outstanding contributions to Tibetan culture and education and is renowned as one of the world's leading Tibetan Buddhist scholars. For the past forty years Tudeng Nima Rinpoche sought out, preserved and published thousands of volumes of Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu, Gelug, Jonang and Bon literature.

Since the inception of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) in 1999, Tudeng Nima Rinpoche has served as a board member.

Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp is Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies with the Department of South Asian Studies and with the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University. He chairs the Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies of Harvard University. Professor van der Kuijp worked at the Nepal Research Center in Kathmandu, Nepal, at the Free University in Berlin, Germany, and at the University of Washington, Seattle, before joining the Harvard Faculty in July 1995.

His research focuses primarily on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhist intellectual history, and Tibetan-Mongol and Tibetan-Chinese relations. His writings can be gleaned at academia.edu.

Professor van der Kuijp received his M.A. from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, and his PhD from Hamburg University, Germany. In 1993, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Janet Gyatso holds the Hershey Professorship in Buddhist Studies in the Divinity School at Harvard University. Before coming to Harvard, she taught for 14 years at Amherst College from 1987-2001. She has also served on the visiting faculties of State University of New York at Stony Brook, Wesleyan University, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and as Numata Professor at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions.

Prof. Gyatso received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in the department of South and Southeast Languages and Literatures with a dissertation on Thangtong Gyalpo and the visionary tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. She has studied extensively with living exponents of the Tibetan tradition, including Thartse Shabdrung Rinpoche, Deshung Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, Drubtob Rinpoche, and Khanpo Sherab Palden.

Her major monograph is Apparitions of the Self: the Secret Life of a Tibetan Visionary, about the autobiographies of the Dzogchen master Jigme Lingpa. She is co-editor with Hanna Havnevik of a collection entitled Women in Tibet (Columbia University Press). She also edited and contributed to a volume on memory in Buddhism, In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism (SUNY Press).

Prof. Gyatso was president of the International Association of Tibetan Studies (IATS) from 2000-2006, and is general secretary for the Americas of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS). She is also co-chair of the Buddhist Studies section of the American Academy of Religion. She serves on the editorial board of both the Encyclopedia of Religion and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. She is a member of the advisory board of the Rubin Museum of Art, member of the editorial board of the monographic series Buddhisms at University of California Press, and of Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism of Wisdom Publications.

Her special interests center on distinctive forms of Tibetan religious culture. She has written on revelatory transmission, issues of authorship, autobiographical writing, and notions of experience in Tibetan traditions and on conceptions of sex and gender in Buddhist monastic law. She is currently working on a book on Tibetan medicine.