Healing the Roots, Transforming The Future

Kazu Haga is a trainer, educator, student and practitioner with more than 25 years of experience in nonviolence and restorative justice. He weaves in lessons from decades of Buddhist practice and trauma healing work to advance social change and collective healing. Kazu is author of the books Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging from Collapse.

Kazu was introduced to the work of social change and nonviolence in 1998, when at the age of 17 he participated in the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage; a 6-month walking journey from Massachusetts to New Orleans to retrace the slave trade. He then spent a year studying nonviolence and Buddhism while living in monasteries throughout South Asia, and returned to the United States at age 19 to begin a lifelong path in social justice work. He spent 10 years working in social justice philanthropy, while directly being involved in and playing leading roles in many movements. He became an active nonviolence trainer in the global justice movement of the late 1990s, and has since led hundreds of workshops worldwide. www.kazuhaga.com

Serena is pursuing a life that remains attentive to the tenderness of a snail’s soft body and reverent to the miracle of its spiraled shell. She is a Chinese-American peacebuilder, storyteller, and community weaver devoted to the belief that intergenerational connection is vital for the future of our peace and justice movements. She recently completed six years as a Special Advisor in Design & Innovation to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, bringing a spiritual and systemic understanding to the public health crisis of loneliness and isolation. She is a Zen chaplain-in-training and serves on the boards of CoGenerate and Commonweal.