Charisse Minerva

Charisse Minerva is a teacher, community organizer, storyteller and mother. Charisse Minerva studied at Tisch School of the Arts/New York University to earn a Master’s in Performance Studies with a concentration in Dance Anthropology. For 16 years she founded and directed the Urban Arts Center (UAC) for the Center for Community Development, an inter-generational award-winning arts program. It was here that she was introduced to the western practice of Mindfulness. That coupled with more than 30 years of Buddhist practice in the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Buddhist organization led to her work in the Mindfulness arena. She designed and directed the Mindfulness/Quaker Studies program at Friends School of Virginia Beach, was a teacher trainer with Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) and has worked extensively with Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme) where she is a board member, a lead teacher on retreats, and is core faculty for their year-long training program. She also advised, co-designed and developed the iBme Community of Color (CoC) initiative. She is presently an advisor with Mindfulness Director Initiative (MDI) an organization that places Mindfulness Directors in educational settings K-secondary education throughout the United States. Continuing artistically, she ran Mindfulness & drumming workshops for 5 years with the Floyd International Arts Festival, founded Dance Drum and Meditation (DDM), a weekly community based intergenerational program, and created songs, poems, and storytelling to share contemplative practices with broad based audiences. Learn more about Charisse at Minerva Trueheart.