Board of Directors, Ten Directions, Inc.
Jeff Charno - Chair
Jeff Charno, is the founder of Being & Doing and produces and hosts online conferences having to do with awakening, flow, and creativity. Prior to this, he founded The Relaxation Company in 1985, and released more than 500 recordings of music for relaxation, meditation and healing over 25 years. He also launched Ellipsis Arts, which released book and CD sets exploring traditional and experimental music from around the globe. Jeff has a graduate certificate from JFK University in integral theory. He has been a student of the Diamond Approach since 2010.
Dan Waddle - Treasurer
Dan Waddle is a longtime student of Hameed Ali, Alia Johnson and other Diamond Approach teachers since joining the DHR 1 group in the mid-1990’s. Prior to his association with the Diamond Approach, he was a Fourth Way student in the Gudjieff-Bennett lineage where he was first introduced to the value and importance of fostering inner awareness and cultivating presence. His appreciation of retreat centers has grown out of his experience as a Diamond Approach student where his group has used many retreat centers over the years. He discovered how important it is for retreatants to feel welcomed and held while they traverse their inner journeys together. He considers supporting Guest House and its mission to be an honor and privilege.
Cory Greenberg - Secretary
Cory Greenberg served as Guest House Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair from 2006 through July 2018. He is a financial and management consultant to small businesses and serves as part-time CFO to one of those businesses. Previously he was Treasurer and partner in several movie theaters in the New York metropolitan area, and was the CFO of a small publicly traded natural foods company. Cory was President and a founding board member of the Cooperative Capital Fund of New England, was Loan Committee Chairperson, Treasurer and board member of the Cooperative Fund of New England for 17 years, and was on the advisory board of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at UMASS Medical Center from 2008 through 2018. Cory has been a student of the Diamond Approach since 2003.
Jane Bronson - Building & Grounds Committee Chair
Jane Bronson is a Diamond Approach teacher and a student of the Ridhwan School since 1992. She is part of the Diamond Approach Retreat Group 5 (DHR5) teaching team and has individual students in NYC and Canandaigua, NY where she also leads a Diamond Approach Book Group. Jane has a degree in physics representing her early fascination with understanding reality. In discovering the Diamond Approach, she found her true pathway for satisfying that love. She has also worked in the fields of project management and interior design and has an ongoing appreciation of visual design. She is the mother of two daughters and lives in southern Connecticut.
Noell Goldberg - Diamond Approach Teachers Representatives Chair
Noell Goldberg, Diamond Approach Teacher Representative, works with Diamond Approach students in the New York area as well as European students, and has been a student of the Diamond Approach since 1998. In addition to work as a writer and editor, she has been an educator for many years, working with college students and training individuals to become hospice volunteers. In 2006, she initiated the Fishkill Correctional Facility Hospice Program where she continues to train and mentor inmates seeking to express their impulse toward the good by attending their dying peers.
Marlene Reisman - Governance Committee Chair
Marlene has been a Diamond Approach student since 1996. In her diverse career in Human Resources management, she was most recently vice president of human resources for a large international organization. Her responsibilities included talent acquisition and development, and rewards and recognition programs. She’s also been an instructor in the New School’s human resources graduate program, and she holds a certification in coaching from the Hudson Institute. Currently, she’s working with recent immigrants on language skills and becoming acclimated to the US.
Josie Sentner - Resource Development Committee Chair
Josie Sentner, Resource Development Committee Chair, has been a principal and executive in the financial field in private equity, buyouts and venture capital. Most recently she has been active in microfinance, working with international networks that provide services to very poor women in Latin America, Africa and Asia. She has served on a number of not for profit boards and is currently a board member of Fonkoze, the largest microfinance institution in Haiti, AccessAfricaNOW, and member of the President’s Council of Accion International. She has been a Diamond Approach student since 2001.
Jorge S. Arango
Jorge S. Arango has been an interior design writer, editor and stylist for almost 30 years. He has co-authored eight books on interior design and writes regularly for various national and international design publications. This naturally led to his work on Guest House’s buildings and grounds committee, which he chaired for several years. Nowadays he is most engaged with the resource development and program committees, as well as some ad hoc committees of the board. Currently he is also on the Ridhwan School’s Communications Council and Editorial Committee. Jorge’s interest in design and art also led to board work with the Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+), a national first-responder organization for artists who suffer career-threatening emergencies, which he chaired from 2004-2006. And during the early years of the AIDS crisis in New York City, he served on the board of the Community Health Project—a nonprofit clinic in Greenwich Village—and volunteered doing triage at the front desk.
Mike Bower
Mike Bower had careers in education and psychology. He directed a special needs “school within a school”, was a school counselor and served as a high school principal. He was a psychologist in private practice as well as a therapist in a residential addiction facility. He taught graduate courses in universities in Massachusetts and Connecticut and holds advanced degrees from Tufts, Boston University and Harvard. He is currently a passionate woodturner. Mike has been a member of Diamond Heart Retreat Group 5 since 2014.
Parvati Grais
Parvati Grais, Diamond Approach Teacher Representative, is a Diamond Approach teacher and student of the Ridhwan School since 1998. She works with individual students in Amherst, Ma and in Diamond Approach Retreat Group 5 (DHR5). Parvati has worked as a teacher, cofounder and director of an independent school, educational therapist, guidance counselor, and psychotherapist. As an original member of The Abode, a Sufi Community, Parvati guided individual and group meditation/inquiry retreats.
Laurie Leonard
Laurie Leonard served as Guest House’s board chair from 2010 to 2014. From 2015 to 2019 she was the Executive Director of End of Life Choices New York, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve end of life care so that people can have a better quality of life in their final months and a peaceful death. She currently has a private practice in pet loss bereavement counseling. Laurie was for ten years the president and general manager of an NBC-affiliated television station that won many national awards for its news, programming, and marketing. She has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and an MSW from Fordham University. Laurie has served on the board of directors of many organizations, including a bank, a library, a chamber of commerce, a social services charity, a tourism bureau, and a crisis hotline. In 2001 she received a New York City Volunteer Service Award. Laurie has been a Diamond Approach student since 2000.
Hadley Perry
Hadley Perry has worked with many small, progressive organizations in a variety of capacities. She was an event planner for 15 years for groups such as Adult Literacy Media Alliance, Center for Anti-Violence Education, and New York Women in Film & Television. She served for five years as executive director of Dyke TV, a lesbian video collective that taught videomaking and editing and produced a magazine-format TV show. She ran a three-year panel discussion series for the NYC LGBTQ Community Center and managed the East Coast satellite office of National Center for Lesbian Rights. Hadley has also written grants and copyedited white papers and books for such organizations as Global Rights; Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law & Development; and Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. She was the intake coordinator of Association of Lesbian & Gay Affirmative Psychotherapists for 11 years. She is a copy editor for two law firms and also has a sideline business as a clutter counselor. Hadley has been a Diamond Approach student since 2008.
David Schulz
David Schulz is Director of the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic and the Floyd Abrams Clinical Lecturer at Yale Law School, and a Senior Counsel to Ballard Spahr, LLP. The MFIA Clinic is dedicated to increasing government transparency, defending the essential work of news gatherers, and protecting freedom of expression by providing pro bono legal services to journalists, news organizations and activists who otherwise lack access to legal resources. As a New York-based media lawyer, David has been defending the rights of journalists and news organizations for more than 40 years. He is a Trustee of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois and has served on the boards of several public and private organizations, including the Hudson Valley Greenway Conservancy and the New York Committee on Open Government. He has been a Diamond Approach student since 2000.
David Walker
David Walker is a family medicine physician who practices “slow medicine” in these fast times. He provides general consultative care and health direction for those who find themselves stuck and need more time and attention than the healthcare system currently allows. His practice has been stretching in new directions as he learns more about the healing effects of somatic work with his patients. He is on the medical staff of both Middlesex and Yale-New Haven hospitals. David and his wife Cary have been students in the Diamond Approach since 2014 with DHR5 at the Guest House. They live locally in Lyme, CT and are grateful to have the refuge of the Guest House so near. They used to enjoy its prior incarnation, The Inn at Chester, too. David serves on the Buildings and Grounds Committee.