As associate professor of religious studies at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, I teach courses on world religions, Asian religions, and Japanese culture to students of all ages and backgrounds. As a senior consultant for Japan Intercultural Consulting, over the past eighteen years I have conducted hundreds of cross-cultural training courses throughout the United States and Mexico in Japanese, Spanish and English. I have worked with more than sixty global companies, including many Japanese firms and their partners in the automotive, auto parts, electronics, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, energy and banking industries. I specialize in teambuilding programs for many types of multicultural groups and programs for companies involved in mergers and acquisitions.My cross-cultural expertise comes from having lived and worked (and having made every cultural mistake it is possible to make) in a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto for seven years and in Mexico City for eight years. In Kyoto I studied and taught meditation and led workshops and retreats; drawing on my experience with Buddhist meditation, I teach meditation classes for Turning Point, a subsidiary of the University of Kansas Health System, and the JCCC Student Wellness Program. I earned a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University.