Speakers 4/18All of the speakers are facilitators in the BIPOC Sitting Group at Clouds in Water Zen Center. Keika Karín Aguilar-San Juan Karín San Juan (she/they/siya) has been a Board Member of Clouds in Water since 2008 and helped to create the Race, Love and Liberation LAB (for growing spiritual things). She received jukai from Sosan Flynn in October 2020. She has been teaching American Studies at Macalester College since 1999. Her parents immigrated from the Philippines to the United States in the 1960s; with a younger brother who is also gay, she was born and raised in New England. Zenzele Isoke Zenzele Isoke Ph.D. is Associate Professor & Chair of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She has practiced meditation since 2005 and has been an active member of Common Ground Meditation Community since 2014. A mother of two black women, Zenzele designs and teaches university courses that integrate mindfulness of body and breath techniques with Black feminist thought to teach about race, gender, and empire for undergraduate students including Pleasure, Intimacy, Violence, and a new freshman seminar on Trauma and the White Racial Frame. She is the author of Urban Black Women and the Politics of Resistance (Palgrave 2013). Zenzele also leads BIPOC meditation at the Yoga Room in North Minneapolis. She is a member of the Order of Freedom sangha and the Buddhist Justice Reporter project. Busshin Carol Atsuko Iwata Carol Iwata (she/they) served as Board Chair at Clouds in Water Zen Center for 3 years, and co-created the Race, Love and Liberation LAB at Clouds. In 2011, she received jukai at Clouds from Byakuren Judith Ragir. She currently coordinates the BIPOC meditation sangha at Clouds in Water, serves on the Ethics and Reconciliation Committee, and is the administrator for the Deep Listening for Social Change project, which is sponsored by Clouds and was initiated in response to George Floyd’s murder. Carol has worked on social justice programs and community-building for more than 50 years, and co-founded two Asian-American community-building organizations. Her maternal and paternal grandparents all immigrated from Japan in the early 1900’s. As a volunteer, she manages and plans programs, working with and for BIPOC communities, in applying spiritual practice toward the work of social and racial justice. Gyokujun Didi Koka Didi Koka, MD graduated from University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Ohio and completed family medicine residency training at Ramsey Family and Community Medicine program in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has practiced for over 20 years in family community medicine clinics in East Saint Paul and South and North Minneapolis. Dr. Koka serves as a staff faculty physician at the department of Family Medicine at Hennepin Healthcare and as medical director of the Hennepin Healthcare East Lake Clinic. She has been part of the Clouds community for 16 years and has served on the Ino Ryo, on the Clouds in Water Reconciliation Committee, and as teacher in the Youth Practice program. She received Jukai at Clouds in Water Zen Center from dharma teacher Flying Fish Barbara Murphy and is active with the LAB at Clouds. She has an MFA in poetry and is a published writer, fluent in Spanish and proficient in French and recently was awarded a Bush community grant to bring Trauma informed Care practices to the clinical practice of primary care. Felicia Washington Sy Felicia Washington Sy Ph.D. earned her Master’s of Social Work from the University of Minnesota and her doctorate from the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. She is a licensed independent clinical social worker and traumatologist with over 20 years of experience providing trauma-informed care to survivors of sexual trauma and physical violence. Dr. Sy celebrates twelve years of teaching as a social work educator in area colleges and universities. She combines mindfulness-based social work practice and intercultural theory to direct practitioners to work with diverse populations across the Twin Cities Metropolitan area. She is passionate about social justice and human rights and maintains a private practice in the metro area. Dr. Sy is a member of the Order of Freedom sangha and the Buddhist Justice Reporter project. Marcus Young Marcus Young 楊墨 is a behavioral artist who makes new forms of belonging and liberation through individual and social practice. Marcus has been attending Clouds in Water events since the 90s, is a co-creator of the LAB at Clouds, and has co-led several sesshins focusing on embodied practice. Since 2008, he has been leading Don’t You Feel It Too?—a participatory street dance practice for social healing and inner-life liberation. From 2006 to 2015, he served as City Artist in St. Paul, MN, including creating the sidewalk poetry system. At the Minneapolis Institute of Art he presented With Nothing to Give, I Give Myself—living 10 days around-the-clock at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to foster the revelation that people are the great overlooked works of art. Marcus is stage director with Ananya Dance Theater, program director of Art for Social Change at HECUA, and artist in residence for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. He received his MFA in Theater at the University of Minnesota.