John Chowning
President
John has practiced meditation for more than forty years and has studied Buddhism for the past 15 years. He began serving as one of the meditation leaders for our Monday Night Buddhist Meditation Group in 2017.
He has a Masters in Education from the University of Evansville, in Indiana. He spent most of his career working with the Job Corps program, which provides education and job training for disadvantaged young adults. He began as an instructor in 1974 and later became an academic supervisor at the Earle C. Clements Job Corps Center in Morganfield, Kentucky. In 1989 he took a position at the Job Corps National Office in Washington DC, where he soon became responsible for the development of all of the program’s academic curricula. John retired in 2015, having worked for the US Department of Labor’s Employment Training Administration for 24 years. While living in Kentucky and Maryland, he also volunteered as an adult literacy tutor and a tutor trainer. His hobbies include songwriting and audio engineering.
John is one of the roatating teachers of the Monday night meditation group at WUU..
Ben Thacker-Gwaltney
Vice President / Teachers Committee Chair
Ben has been teaching meditation since 2010, and he began meditating in 2001 at the Joshua Tree Center in Charlottesville, VA with Dr. Mark Oberman. He graduated in 1993 with an M.Div. from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. For 15 years he worked in community organizing, with a strong component in adult education, for the nonprofit Virginia Organizing. He has also completed over 1000 hours of experience teaching Yoga for Arthritis with an additional focus on somatic meditation. He describes himself as a Buddhist Mutt, finding skillful teachings in Theravada, Tibetan Buddhism and Zen.
Ben is one of the rotating teachers of the Monday night meditation group at WUU, and he leads a Buddhist book/study group on Thursday mornings at WUU
Pankaj Niroula
Secretary
Pankaj is a new resident in Williamsburg and has been working on his PhD in Computer Science at William & Mary since 2023.
He considers “Williamsburg Buddhist Sangha” a precious gift Williamsburg presented to him, and has been a regular participant in the meditation groups since his arrival here.
He comes from Kathmandu, Nepal where in 2015, he was introduced to and trained in Vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka. He has greatly benefitted from his continued practice and appreciates its role in shaping his life since his first retreat.
He is grateful for his engagement with WBS, with which he believes he gets to nurture two of his core values – Compassion and Community.
John Davis
Communications Committee Chair
John moved to Williamsburg in the summer of 2019 and began attending WBS meditation groups that fall. He has been meditating and practicing yoga for a long time. He began attending meditation retreats in the mid-1980s. Since then, he’s done dozens of retreats. These retreats have been in various traditions and centers, including: Tibetan, Korean Zen, Rinzai Zen, IMS (Barre, MA), Southern Dharma Retreat Center and others.
John is a retired graphic designer who enjoys painting.
He has a regular daily practice and knows that love, however obscured, is at the root of all human emotion.
Susan Walkley
Events Committee Chair
Susan has been interested in Buddhism since minoring in religion in college. She completed the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class with Rebecca Eldridge in 2014 and has meditated regularly since then. She has studied Norman Fischer’s Training for Compassion through two different classes and has also been involved in other Sangha meditation and book study groups.
When possible, she works to incorporate mindfulness, meditation and somatic approaches in her work as an integrative nurse practitioner and massage therapist. Different life experiences continue to lead her back to explorations of Buddhist traditions.
She is grateful to have opportunities to connect with other people in the local community who are engaging in practice and study and is honored to be serving on the Williamsburg Buddhist Sangha Board.
Terry Holland
At Large
Terry is a native of Virginia and has lived in Williamsburg since 2004.
Terry was introduced to mindfulness meditation in 2022 through the Williamsburg Buddhist Sangha and has been dedicated to her practice ever since.
After retirement from the field of Orthodontics and raising two sons, Terry embraced the opportunity to explore her own passions. Drawn to Buddhism by its messages of peace,kindness, and compassion she continues to deepen her practice and contribute to the sangha’s growth.
In her free time, Terry enjoys refurbishing cast-off furniture and decor giving them a new life through creative restoration.