The Board of Directors is the governing body of Seattle Insight Meditation Society, a religious 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. Board members serve as stewards of Seattle Insight, its resources, programs, and activities. Directors include at least a President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Secretary, and Guiding Teacher. The Board meets every other month to discuss issues and to deliberate policy. The Board also convenes committee meetings for a specific purpose as needed. Seattle Insight values a Board with a broad perspective whose directors have diverse backgrounds, views, and skills to better serve the sangha and the Dharma.
Tim Geil began practicing Insight Meditation in 1996 and has taught meditation since 2006 under the guidance of Rodney Smith. In 2016, Tim completed the four-year Residential Retreat Teacher Training through Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society, and Insight Retreat Center. The core teachers of this intensive program were Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Carol Wilson, Gil Fronsdal, Guy Armstrong, Andrea Fella, Trudy Goodman, and Phillip Moffitt.
Tim emphasizes three expressions of the Dharma: investigation, non-resistance, and compassion. Our daily lives prove a tailor-made spiritual path for each person when we are willing to investigate areas of constriction and resistance. This reveals our personal suffering created by the illusion of a separate self. A deep sense of non-resistance and compassion brings balance to investigation. Relaxing fully into this moment is the essence of non-resistance. Compassion brings sensitivity and kindness as we meet all aspects of ourselves. This allows the heart’s release into stillness.
A Co-Guiding Teacher of Seattle Insight, Tim offers talks, classes, interviews, and retreats. He also works closely with leadership and volunteers at Seattle Insight as a member of the board of directors. Tim has inhabited many roles: husband, father, wilderness ranger, martial artist, hospice volunteer, massage therapist. His relationship with his wife and daughter are a joyful and fundamental part of his dharma practice.
Keri Pederson is primarily a student of the dharma, but teaches regularly when invited. She began meditating in 1998, motivated by a deepening yoga practice as well as a strong desire to understand suffering. She began formal retreat practice in the tradition of S. N. Goenka, and has since sat retreats with a variety of lay and monastic teachers is the U.S., Thailand, and India. Rodney Smith invited her to teach in 2007 and she was authorized to teach by Spirit Rock/IMS/IRC after a four year retreat-teacher training. Keri also works in elder-care and lives on Vashon Island with her husband and young son.
Cubba found the Seattle Insight community through friends and will be forever grateful. She took a beginning meditation class from Rodney Smith in 2016 and again from Tim Geil in 2019, each experience unique and rich. She’s followed Seattle Insight from St. Marks to SODO to Friends Meeting. The dhamma has been a steadying practice in her life, no matter the meeting place. She appreciates all the spaces Seattle Insight provides, volunteer opportunities little and big, to connect with and grow this community.
A native of Detroit, Cubba has lived on Seattle’s Eastside for the past 20 years where she and her husband raised their three children. A social worker by training, she is a currently a Parent Education Instructor at Bellevue College with a private practice coaching parents. For fun she is an amateur dog trainer and loves dogs, horses, hiking, grandchildren, and as many books as the library will allow her to check out.
Steven was first introduced to Vipassana meditation in 2008 via a radio program on prison Vipassana instruction by the late teacher S.N. Goenka. He credits his practice and the Seattle Insight’s Death and Dying Support Group Project with “saving his life” through the difficult terminal illness of his late wife. Several Goenka retreats and Seattle Insight’s introductory classes later, Steven has made the Seattle Insight community his home. Along the way he received Rodney Smith’s blessing to train with Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts to facilitate the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction curriculum as a way to open the door to others to Vipassana meditation, and he has worked to establish a Vipassana program run by students at Bastyr University with guiding teacher Tuere Sala, as well as continuing to pursue several research projects on the physiology of meditation and focused attention. Steven feels privileged to serve as board vice-president and facilities director.
With deep roots in Kansas, and a deep affinity with the Emerald City, Steven maintains close ties with both, continuing to teach neuroscience at Bastyr University and helping out during planting and harvest seasons on the family farm back home. He has three grown children, likes to kayak to work and work in the garden, and acknowledges that some cats and dogs seem to have taken up residence in his house.
Shawn (she/her) is a contemplative educator. She brings a deep commitment to Dharma practice, rooted in over two decades of mindfulness meditation—including the past decade as an Insight practitioner. She is currently in the Community Dharma Leader (CDL7) program at Spirit Rock. A dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, Shawn is a former dentist, high school biology teacher, and university professor in science education. She integrates scientific inquiry with contemplative curiosity to support personal and collective transformation. Shawn is dedicated to creating inclusive dhamma spaces grounded in mindfulness, self-inquiry, and embodied presence. Her practice is shaped by ehipassiko, directly experiencing the dhamma, a love of learning, and the guidance of the teachings that continue to reveal our capacity for clarity, connection, and choice in the present moment.
As a certified Life Balance Strategist, Shawn supports individuals and teams through life’s changes and transitions using protocols and assessments developed by Phillip Moffitt to navigate uncertainty with clarity, compassion, and inner steadiness.
After completing an introductory meditation class held at a local yoga studio, Mae was advised by the teacher to check out Seattle Insight as a next step in meditation. After taking an Introduction to Meditation class from Rodney Smith, she became interested in exploring the spiritual journey about which Rodney is so passionate. In the last few years, Mae has found the Nine Bodies practice method (taught by Phillip Moffitt, Tuere Sala, and Dana DePalma) important to her Insight practice.
Mae is a Montana native and who, among many Montanans, moved to Seattle to find gainful employment. She retired after working as a research scientist and then an attorney. Her favorite thing to do is spend time in Brooklyn, NY with her granddaughter (and her daughter and son-in-law, too)–and so many books can be read on that long plane ride.
Judith Avinger has a long history with meditation and other spiritual practices in several traditions, including yoga, Sufism and Buddhism. She is also a mentor and leader of the Dances of Universal Peace, a moving meditation that draws from all spiritual paths. She discovered Seattle Insight around ten years ago when she did a retreat with Tim and Keri at Cloud Mountain. Around the same time, she realized she was being drawn to the Buddhist teachings through the Dances of Universal Peace from that tradition. She moved back to Bellingham in the spring of 2020 after living and working in Quebec for 30 years. Since the pandemic was at its height, she began looking for an online meditation group and rediscovered Seattle Insight. She has been meditating and studying with the Seattle Insight teachers since then. In addition to acting as a Local Dharma Leader, Judith is a member of the Seattle Insight Board of Directors.
In January of 2024, she retired from her long-time job as technical writer and translator for a software company in Montreal and began to devote even more of her time to her spiritual practices. She also spends her free time writing haiku, playing the piano and gardening.
Nana Gyesie, PhD is an ICF certified leadership, life and spiritual coach, and a RYT 200 certified Kemetic Yoga teacher under Master Yirser Ra Hotep and part of the Community Dharma Leader program at Spirit Rock. He was precepted by Bhante Buddharakkita. The dharma is a tool for his ongoing liberation, particularly focusing on metta, anapanasati. Nana practices at the Seattle Insights Meditation Center, under the tutelage of Tuere Sala and Tim Geil. He is originally a native of Ghana, and is a proud father of three indigo children, and practices street photography in his spare time, inspired by Gordon Parks; and loves listening to loud reggae music on beautiful Seattle summer days.
