Eve Ekman
Contemplative Social Scientist, Teacher, and Author
Dr Eve Ekman is a contemplative social scientist, teacher, and author whose work sits at the intersection of emotion science, Buddhist practice, and human wellbeing. A founding teacher of the Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) programme, Eve’s path into this work began during six years as a medical social worker in the emergency room, where questions of how to sustain compassion under pressure became not academic, but urgent. She returned to UC Berkeley to complete a PhD in Social Welfare, studying burnout and how we can maintain compassion over the long haul. Around that same time, she joined her father, Dr Paul Ekman, and Buddhist teacher B. Alan Wallace to launch the first public training of Cultivating Emotional Balance, a secular, evidence-based programme rooted in both modern science and ancient contemplative wisdom. She has directed that programme ever since. Eve is a Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and collaborated with her father and the Dalai Lama on the Atlas of Emotions, an online tool designed to build a shared language for emotional awareness. Her own contemplative practice began with B. Alan Wallace, who introduced her to the foundational practices of attention, introspection, and heart-based meditation that sit at the core of CEB.