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..
Mary McGovern
Treasurer
Mary has been deeply committed to Buddhist Mindfulness and Compassion practices since 2012. Her studies include the works of the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Jack Kornfield, Pema Chodron, Tara Brach and others, and she has attended residential retreats of the Insight Meditation Society (MA), Southern Dharma Center (NC) and Insight Meditation Center Washington, as well as completing Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training. In February 2019, she began an intensive, two year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program led by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. She is an ordained interfaith minister who serves individuals and the community by sharing compassion practices, compassionate guidance/support, and sacred ceremony.
Mary began her professional life as a music teacher, spent time working on Capitol Hill (Washington, DC), and then pivoted to association management for 20+ years. Looking for a way to bring Mindfulness and Compassion practices into distressed situations that would benefit from them, she left her job at the end of 2018 to pursue a Master’s in Social Work. She is also a student of nonviolent communication.
Mary is one of the rotating teachers of the Wednesday night meditation group.
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.
Ben Thacker-Gwaltney
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
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 over 40 years. 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.
John Thompson
At Large
John M. Thompson is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Christopher Newport University who has lived in the Williamsburg area with his family since 2004.
He was raised in a religious household (with a father who was a Presbyterian minister and a mother who was a former Director of Christian Education) outside of Alexandria, Virginia but he and his older brother survived somehow — probably because of his favorite t.v. show, “Kung Fu,” Mad magazine, and his deep-seated love of rock and roll.
John earned a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy with High Honors from William and Mary, spent a year living and studying in Athens, Greece (where he met the woman to whom he has been married for 32 years and counting), and eventually earned a Master’s in Theology from Boston University and a Ph.D in the Cultural and Historical Study of Religion from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.
He has lived and traveled in Japan, China, and India, has a 1st degree black belt in taekwondo, and has practiced meditation and various forms of taiji and qigong for many years. For better or worse, he is an introvert who loves dogs, gardening, and playing guitar.