Awakin.org

Our Forest Call guest this week will be: David and Hi-Jin Hodge. They've designed with the likes of Steve Jobs, authored an anthology called Impermanence, and created art installations that have been celebrated internationally at places like the Nobel Museum. But those are side things....

Every week, we have a "Forest Call" to share insights and inspiration from various corners of the ServiceSpace ecosystem.  Typically, the call opens with a circle of sharing, then features a guest speaker and is followed by dynamic Q&A around the emergent themes....

Every week, we have a "Forest Call" to share insights and inspiration from various corners of the ServiceSpace ecosystem.  Typically, the call opens with a circle of sharing, then features a guest speaker and is followed by dynamic Q&A around the emergent themes. Our...

Krupali Tejura, MD, a radiation oncologist, treats patients at the Corona Cancer Clinic in Corona, Calif. And via the internet, she channels another powerful form of energy on behalf of patients with advanced-stage cancer — the goodwill and kindness of other people. Dr. Tejura uses the...

Tapan Parikh is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the use of computing to support sustainable economic development across the world. When asked what kind of information interests him the most, he...

Somik Raha, is a dear friend and servant leader of the ecosystem, a PhD in Decision and Risk Analysis from Stanford University, and is now Strategy Consultant at SmartOrg. While talking about this call, this is how he introduced himself and the questions he lives...

Anupam Pathak, Founder and CEO of Liftlabs, is an inventor and entrepreneur at heart and passionate about creating new technologies for social benefit. He founded Lift Labs with the intent to apply his broad scientific knowledge and engineering skills to improve our quality of life. In his own...

Inspired by the writings of Thoreau, Steinbeck, Robert Pirsig and others, David Levins often rewrites excerpts from their books.  In 2011 he took one of his essays out of the commonplace book he keeps and used it to start a community garden where a large number of the city’s residents...

Marina Gorbis is a futurist. Her colorful life arc started in Ukraine, "in a three room apartment I shared with my mother, sister, and grandparents on a street named after a radical and obscure left-wing German politician in a city most famous for its steps forever immortalized in the movie...

In 1998, while getting his master’s degree in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, Janardhan (Jay) came to the realization that a life of fulfillment trumps a life of achievement. His search led him to understanding and researching meditation techniques, which had an immediate...

Nipun Mehta is the founder of ServiceSpace (formerly CharityFocus).  In 2001, at the age of 25, Nipun quit his job to become a "full time volunteer." Since then, his work has reached millions, he has received many prestigious awards, and has tirelessly addressed hundreds...

Violaine Hacker is a Phd in Law and Public Policies at the Sorbonne, and the founder of the Common Good Forum in Europe. The Common Good Forum represents an initiative to bring together experts and practitioners in various fields to reconsider economics and other areas of human enterprise with...

Every year, ServiceSpace hosts a ten week internship for high school and college students.  Through the course of the summer, they are assigned weekly homeworks, reflections and unique practices -- all of them designed to nurture conditions for an inner transformation to arise naturally...

Kentaro Toyama is a technologist deeply committed to human development and the cultivation of virtue.  An optimist-turned-realist who believes that technologies "increase possibility," he has come to conclude, over the course of a career in technology for development, that...

Piya Sorcar is ​the founder and CEO of TeachAIDS, a social venture spun out of Stanford University in 2009 that has been recognized as an innovation that could “change the world” by MIT Technology Review. At TeachAIDS, Piya leads a team of world experts in medicine, public health,...

David Bollier is an author, activist, blogger and consultant who explores "the commons" as a new paradigm of economics, politics and culture.  "The commons is not an ideology so much as a lens and language for understanding the things that we share -- something that, in our...

Philippe Simonin had a dream to share dreams. Driven by a faith in creating a collaborative community where people support and help each other actualize their dreams, he founded Dreemit.org, a personal social online project aiming at creating hope and community.  Originally from a little...

Rikin Gandhi helped found is now the CEO of Digital Green, an agricultural development company.  Digital Green is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of rural communities across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa through the use of videos on agricultural best practices,...

Elle Luna is an iconic designer, artist, painter, and writer.   If you’ve used ever the Uber app … If you’ve ever swiped an email on your iPhone… If you’ve ever deferred an email for some date in the future… If you’ve ever self-published on...

“Wisdom is not about intellectual debate, but magical moments of presence so deeply connected and so pure with people.”  -- Bernd Kolb (Atman Project) Business leader Alfred Tolle has spent his personal and professional lives at the geographic as well as spiritual...

A father who left before she was born.  Relocating with her mother and uncles as refugees from Vietnam to Canada as a young child.  Growing up in an overcrowded household.  Gangs.  A scholarship to the prestigious engineering program at the University of Waterloo. ...

Ulrike Reinhard is a German publisher, author, futurist, and a catalyst for global development efforts.  As the woman behind the Barefoot Skateboarders of Janwar, a skateboard park in rural India that is upending notions of caste and gender barriers and empowering a community...

Mary Rothschild was making bread with a group of preschool aged children at Ariadne's Thread, the children's center she founded and directed, when "she realized there had been a period of total silence as the children paid attention to kneading their piece of dough into an animal...

As the son of missionaries, David Bullon Patton is familiar with exploring, seeking new experiences and meeting new people. Above all, his childhood taught him the importance of service. For the past 2 years David has served as the Director of Innovation at the Costa Rican Ministry of Science,...

Thought leader, storyteller, and advocate for the creative class, Greg Tehven is turning the world of conventional economic development on its head, and inviting people to build the communities they want to live in.  After traveling around the world and taking in...

Ron Epstein, Ph.D., is a Buddhist scholar and practitioner who has spent decades as a professor of Buddhist studies.  A prolific writer, translator, ethicist and activist who has authored countless pieces on the modern application of Buddhism and Buddhist ethics, he is a trustee, chancellor...

“The bad news is that everything is broken. The good news is that we can fix it. And the ugly news is that it’s gonna get really messy.” – Mark Stevenson   Mark Stevenson has described himself as a “reluctant futurist” and “pragmatic...

Jane Murray, a former commercial lawyer qualified in the UK, Ireland and New York, and now a start-up entrepreneur in the United Kingdom, has shifted both in her life and in her career from inhabiting the head-space to the heart-space. As she's sought connection and belonging in a...

An accidental tech exec, Srinija Srinivasan joined Yahoo! in 1995 as one of the first five employees, where she served as Vice President, Editor-in-Chief for 15 years before stepping down in 2010. With a background in artificial intelligence, her work at Yahoo! centered on the human experience,...

Rachael Flatt is an American former competitive figure skater who is devoting her energy to researching mental health.  Currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of North Carolina, she is studying technology-based tools for eating disorders and athlete mental...

Kevin F. Adler is a social entrepreneur dedicated to a world where everyone is seen as invaluable and interconnected. Adler is the Founder and CEO of Miracle Messages, a nonprofit that is working to end homelessness by rebuilding social support systems. Miracle Messages has been featured...

William Dyson is a technology visionary based in Oakland, California. He is the founder of the Douglass Decentralized Operating System (DDOS or “Douglas Decentralized OS”), named in honor of Frederick Douglass — an African American icon who stood for the equality of all peoples...

Kern Beare is the founder of Pop the Bubble, a personal initiative born in the wake of the 2016 election to help heal our national divide. “Tucked inside my cozy Silicon Valley ‘bubble,’ I'd missed the signs of a radical shift in the American electorate,” Kern said....

On the outside, Narendra Kini (Naren) is a successful Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur, executive, and technologist. On the inside, he is an artist, poet, and heartful seeker of spirituality, peace, inner beauty, and truth. Naren has co-founded or managed thriving companies and startups...

Pavithra Sundareshan was 22 years old when, together with her husband and business partner, she started Vindhya, a business process outsourcing organization in Bangalore, India, which may be the first and only for-profit enterprise in which the majority of employees are people with disabilities...