Originally broadcast at 2:00 p.m. ET Friday, July 22, 2022.

Amy Edelstein, author, educator, and nonprofit leader is a powerful communicator of ideas that can help us transform ourselves and the culture we live in. Her work illustrates the insight that comes from viewing all our experience in a vast context, as we learn to weave together the evolutionary history of the cosmos, the developmental shifts in global culture, and the subtleties of contemplative insight. Her programs support individuals and groups to discover deeper fulfillment, joy, and purposefulness in life. Amy is the founder and Executive Director of Inner Strength Education, a non-profit organization that supports youth development through an innovative and evidence-based mindfulness and systems thinking curriculum. Empowering more than 17,000 inner city high school students in Philadelphia since 2014, Inner Strength received the coveted CASEL-recommended designation. In recognition of the impact of Inner Strength’s work in violence reduction, Amy was awarded a Philadelphia Social Innovators’ Award. Amy is also the co-founder of Emergence Education Press, which is dedicated to bringing insightful and transformative ideas to the fore so that we can create a more compassionate and inspired world. A Cornell University College Scholar, Amy has more than forty years’ experience with contemplative practice, including a background in both Western and Eastern traditions, as well as in evolutionary spirituality and contemporary multidisciplinary perspectives that connect inner discovery with a deep sense of responsibility for our collective future. She is the author of six books, including the IPPY award-winning The Conscious Classroom and a new memoir Adventure in Zanskar.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.