Our People

Melissa Moore Ph.D., has guided Karuna Training in North America since 2014 and co-founded Karuna Training in Europe in 1996. She holds an MA in Contemplative Psychotherapy from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and a Ph.D. in Psychological Anthropology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. A student of Vajrayana Buddhism and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche since 1979, Melissa brings a wealth of experience to her work.

From 2006 to 2016, she was the founding Director of the Felton Institute for Research and Training in San Francisco. There, she led community-based research efforts on California's most marginalized populations. She also trained front-line mental health providers in evidence-based practices and researched the resulting outcomes.

Melissa is currently the Executive Director and lead faculty member of Karuna Training. She has taught Karuna Training in nine countries and four U.S. states. Melissa is also the author of The Diamonds Within Us: Uncovering Brilliant Sanity Through Contemplative Psychology, which can be found and ordered at thediamondswithinus.org.

Sandra Ladley, MA, is a core Karuna Training faculty member. She partnered with Melissa Moore to bring Karuna Training to North America. Sandra received her MA in Contemplative Psychology from Naropa University.

She is a long-time Buddhist practitioner and teacher, an interdisciplinary artist and activist, and a life-long student. Sandra teaches Buddhist, Contemplative Psychology and Creative Arts programs internationally. She draws on a breadth of experience as a teacher, counselor, and manager in business, mental health and creative arts settings to bring vibrancy and engagement to her teaching.

Miriam Hall is a cisgender queer white woman who is the lead teacher at Herspiral Contemplative Arts
(www.herspiral.com) and co-director of Nalanda Miksang Contemplative Photography (www.miksang.org), as well as a senior teacher of Nalanda Miksang.

She is a meditation instructor, an authorized Maitri Space Awareness teacher, and a creativity coach. Her work focuses on the intersection of compassion and perception and unapologetically regards all liberation as inherently tied to social justice. She was a member of the first North American cohort of Karuna Training, both basic and graduate, and has been on faculty since 2017.

Sanjida Ali is a cisgender, straight, Bengali American woman who earned a degree in Neuroscience from Brown University. In 2015, she began studying meditation, Buddhist philosophy, and psychology.

Sanjida completed Karuna Training from 2019 to 2023, finding immense value in its embodied practices. This experience provided her with profound insights into the interconnectedness among the brain, body, emotions, environment, and human behavior. These lessons seamlessly integrated into her daily life, expanding her capacity for compassionate listening, patience, and grace, towards both herself and others. Sanjida is committed to fostering inclusive environments, where individuals embrace each other's unique strengths and experiences, nurturing personal growth and building connections rooted in a shared belief in the inherent wisdom and goodness within each individual.

Professionally, Sanjida manages human clinical trials in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. She delights in cuddling cats, tending to plants, creating art, and embracing playfulness whenever possible.

Aina Fuller has been a meditator for over 21 years, drawn to Karuna training to better integrate contemplative practices into her busy daily life as a pediatric nurse and mother. She was in residence at the Tassajara Zen Center in California for 2 practice periods and lived at the San Francisco Zen Center for two years. 

Aina brings the deep discipline of a Zen practitioner. The practices and community she found in Karuna have helped her grow in her capacity for authenticity, vulnerability, and resilience in turbulent times. In the Karuna community, she has found a community based on radical honesty, where we are guided to trust our own intrinsic health and wisdom. 

As a facilitator, she hopes to help support others to cultivate these practices that have been so valuable to her. She lives in Baltimore with her two sons, ages  14 and 16, and works at John Hopkins as a pediatric RN.

Terry Jaworski, MA, LMHC graduated from Naropa University in 1983 with a degree in
Contemplative Psychology. She worked in Community Mental Health for 25 years as a clinician and supervisor.

Terry is now in private practice in Seattle, WA and specializes in mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy. She has practiced meditation for 40 years, has been a meditation instructor for 25 years, and is excited to be part of the Karuna Training Faculty

Luchy López lives in Madrid, Spain and she’s the mother of three grown women. With a performing arts background both academic and professional, and after a healing journey from cancer (1997) – she committed to sharing how theater, dance, color, a relationship with space, and unseen guides around us helped her heal. In 2006 she created A Corazón abierto (ACa) a ritualistic experience of self inquiry and healing of the bonds with our relatives and vibrant space, through free dance/movement and mind-body imagining. ACa is performed with long flowing skirts that she called faldAlas. FaldAlas is a project to cultivate and spread compassion.

Luchy has been a Buddhist practitioner started in 1991. She completed the graduate program of Karuna Training in Spain in 2017. Karuna brought her into a new meaning of the word commitment and gave her work a new dimension including the power of listening/speaking from the heart – along with the wisdom of the Five Buddha families. Luchy learned Alba Emoting from Andrea Bañuelos, a direct student of Susana Bloch, the creatrice of this scientific system. She was given permission to teach and share the work (2019).

Carolyn Sykes has been practicing and studying meditation since 1999. She is a meditation instructor and teaches contemplative Buddhist classes and Dharma Art. Carolyn has a love for teaching and undertook studies in Karuna Training to deepen and strengthen her skills. She studied Karuna Training from 2016 – 2019, graduating from both the basic training and the graduate advanced programs. She is currently on the US faculty for Karuna Training.

Carolyn is a musician with an MFA in Harp Performance, and has a teaching and performing studio Pacific Harps. She performs free-lance in orchestras, as a soloist on concert stages, for film and television recording and for special events both locally and abroad. Originally from Australia, Carolyn now lives in Los Angeles.