What Do We Know? Exploring Non-Western Approaches to Wisdom

Tara makes, teaches, and studies drawing. Her drawings are in the collections of the Morgan Museum, the Parrish Museum, and the William Louis Dreyfus Foundation. Her work with the 6-woman activist collective, Victory Garden, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Historical Society, and The Beinecke Library at Yale University. There are two books about her work, Carrying Silence: The Drawings of Tara Geer; and New York Studio Conversations. She has been teaching for three decades, and, since 2012, she has been teaching in the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She was funded by The National Science Foundation, in collaboration with a team of neuroscientists, to study Harnessing the Power of Drawing for the Enhancement of Learning, and is now researching eye motion in art viewing. She founded and directs the grassroots groups, Action Potluck, and Sanctuary Neighborhoods.

Susan Grelock Yusem, PhD leads strategy and innovation at Commonweal, where she’s part of the stewardship team guiding the organization and supporting the 30+ programs that call Commonweal home. A trained depth psychologist and community psychologist with a doctorate from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Susan’s career has unfolded at the forefront of the organic and regenerative food movement, including leadership roles at Patagonia’s regenerative food division and Amy’s Kitchen. She brings together strategic communication, psychological depth, and collaborative leadership, with deep interests in narrative design, radical hospitality, and bringing the sensibilities of depth psychology into everyday life and group settings. Susan lives in Point Reyes Station, California, where you’ll often find her hiking, trail running, writing, cooking, and celebrating the ways we gather and create meaning together.