Sponsored by the Alumni Association of Princeton University

Moderator:

Matthew C. Weiner
Associate Dean of Religious Life

Panelists:     

Stuart Sovatsky ’71
President Emeritus, Clinician, Association for Transpersonal Psychology

Jud Brewer ’96
Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center, Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University

Kristen Coke ’16
Head of Core Product, Calm

Diana Chao ’21
Founder and Executive Director, Letters to Strangers

PANELISTS

Stuart Sovatsky ’71
Stuart Sovatsky, with 50 years’ clinical psychology experience, convened a 40-country spiritual conference in India cosponsored by the Dalai Lama and pioneered DSM-IV v62.89, a clinical diagnostic code recognizing spiritual issues. He secretly consulted on post-Bosnian War “forgiveness” with the chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, Janez Drnovšek, and has received two awards for resolving “profiled shooter” crises without police. He received the first federal grant bringing meditation into juvenile lockups in 1976 and has authored books/chapters on Wittgensteinian/Buberian approaches to divorce; homicidal, suicidal and other “terminal narratives”; the future of gender; and yogic monastic and family paths to enlightenment. Sovatsky cofounded the $34 million award-winning, sustainable Greencity Lofts, was the first Caucasian to chant with South African Sangoma shamans and consulted for the Johns Hopkins University psilocybin clinical study. His current interests are meditative approaches to gender dysphoria, lifelong marriage and yogic “win-win” resolutions to the pro-life/pro-choice debate.

Jud Brewer ’96
Judson Brewer (“Dr. Jud”) is a New York Times best-selling author and leading expert on habit change and the science of self-mastery. A psychiatrist specializing in anxiety and addictions, he has developed evidence-based programs for smoking, eating and anxiety. His translational research explores the neural mechanisms of mindfulness using fMRI and EEG. He has trained U.S. Olympic athletes, coaches and foreign government ministers, and his work has been featured on “60 Minutes” and in The New York Times, Time and others. Brewer co-founded MindSciences, MindshiftRecovery.org and Going Beyond Anxiety, a next-gen approach that combines cutting-edge science and experiential learning to transform how people relate to anxiety (www.goingbeyondanxiety.com). His books include “The Craving Mind,” “Unwinding Anxiety” and “The Hunger Habit.” He writes the Substack newsletter Inside the Curious Mind.

Kristen Coke ’16
Kristen Coke is a senior product leader passionate about designing meaningful experiences that support people’s emotional well-being. At Calm, she leads product for the flagship Calm app, focusing on how millions of users engage with mindfulness, sleep and self-care tools every day. Her work spans AI-powered personalization, habit-building features and partnerships that bring Calm to new audiences and platforms. Previously, she led product at Peloton, quip and IBM, where she championed human-centered product design — crafting intuitive, emotionally resonant experiences through empathy, strategy and care. Coke is also the founder of The Wedding Strategist, a boutique consultancy that helps couples plan intentional, artful celebrations. A graduate of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Coke serves on the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy’s Bridge Council and has held leadership roles with the Princeton Class of 2016 and Women In Product, New York City. 

Diana Chao ’21
Diana Chao is a Buyi Chinese American social entrepreneur and the founder of Letters to Strangers (L2S), the largest global youth mental health nonprofit. Since founding L2S at age 14, she has scaled the organization to impact more than half a million people across 70 countries. Chao recently completed an MBA at the University of Oxford as a Skoll Scholar, where her work focuses on the intersection of social impact and global mental health infrastructure. A Princeton honors graduate, Chao juggled a background as a NASA astrophysicist and United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change researcher alongside mental health advocacy. She was the lead author of the world’s first youth-for-youth mental health guidebook, currently taught to more than 100,000 students per year. Her honors include recognition by two U.S. presidents, the 2021 Princess Diana Legacy Award and being named a 2020 L’Oréal Paris Woman of Worth.