Anna Breckenridge
Event Manager

Event Management, Zoom Host

Anna (She / Her) grew up in the Bay Area and came to Soto Zen practice as a teenager. She is now a member of Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center and is the Operations Manager for the Soto Zen Buddhist Association. After moving to the East Bay, Anna enrolled in EBMC’s White and Awakening in Sangha program and continued connecting with EBMC leaders through her work with SZBA online programs. Her current interests include gardening, cooking, travel and expanding access and equity in Buddhist practice.

email: abreckenridge at eastbaymeditation dot org

Cassandra Shaylor
Development Director

Fundraising and Development

Cassandra Shaylor (She / Her) is an activist, attorney, and artist based in Oakland. She is the co-founder and former co-director of Justice Now and a co-founder of Critical Resistance, both abolitionist organizations focused on dismantling the prison industrial complex and building a world without prisons. Her academic and written work has focused on issues of women in prison, abolition, and the intersections of race, sexuality, gender, and punishment. Over the past few years she has been a fundraising and communications consultant for a range of social justice and environmental justice groups, and she is currently developing her skills as a metal smith.

email: Cassandra at eastbaymeditation dot org

Jane Won
Retreat Manager

Retreat Manager, Spiritual Teacher & Leadership Program 

Jane (She / Her) is a life-long learner from Los Angeles, the land of the Tongva People. She has been an educator for over a decade--teaching middle school, high school, and now adults. She stumbled upon meditation in 2019 at her first meditation retreat at Deer Park Monastery, and it profoundly changed her to realize that mindfulness is a way of life. Since then, she's found a spiritual home in EBMC's Alphabet and Asian American Deep Refuge Sanghas. She is passionate about serving others and connecting to herself through trauma-informed, holistic practices. She is happiest when she's traveling, reading, dancing, cooking, writing, learning, and having deep conversations with people.  

email: Jane at eastbaymeditation dot org

Kristal Ip
Event Manager

Event Management & Zoom Hosting

Kristal (She / Her) manages events for the East Bay Meditation Center and volunteers for the Alphabet Sangha coordinating committee.  She also works as a certified massage therapist, instructor, and Reiki practitioner.  Her homebase is Oakland, CA, on the land of the Ohlone People.  Through personal experiences and studies about history, nature, the human body, trauma, and self work, Kristal has committed to living in service of balance, joy, and compassion for herself and others.  She loves to integrate the practices of meditation, Buddhism, and therapeutic bodywork to promote holistic wellbeing.  EBMC is Kristal's beloved spiritual home and she is deeply grateful for the loving communities and teachings she has found here.  Some of her favorite interests include camping, reading, music, road trips, cooking, and being with loved ones, including her two small dogs.

email: kristal at eastbaymeditation dot org

Layle Omeran
Development and Fundraising Coordinator

Friends of EBMC monthly donors, Season of Gratitude, Gift Economics

Layle (They / Them) is a migrant music artist and cultural facilitator who is dedicated to finding community at the intersections of language, spiritual practice, and identity. A founder and member of several artistic collectives that create within the context of gender and cultural identity, Layle’s work centers the search for authentic connection to the self and to the collective as means of resistance. A student and a teacher of Arabic music, Layle’s relationship to mystical sound practices facilitates their meditative practice. In 2019, Layle was introduced to EBMC as they moved to the Bay Area, and deeply resonated with the spiritual and political alignment of the space as it quickly became a refuge of practice and community for them.  

email: layle at eastbaymeditation dot org

Mushim (Patricia) Ikeda
Community Director

Communications & Outreach, Volunteer Coordination, Human Resources, Radical Inclusivity, Shared Leadership

Mushim (She / Her) has a background in both monastic and lay Buddhist practice and is also one of EBMC's core teachers. A well-known socially-engaged Buddhist writer and racial justice activist, Mushim also works as an independent Diversity, Equity & Inclusion consultant. At EBMC, she loves to encourage leadership development and spiritual friendship among our many volunteers, and she plays an active role in EBMC's Communications and outreach and on the HR team. She’s also a member of the Radical Inclusivity Committee and the Shared Leadership Committee. www.mushimikeda.com

email: Mushim at eastbaymeditation dot org

wei li king
Operations and IT Director

wei li king (they / he) is a student of life that loves to connect dots and create opportunities for connection with community and land. Before joining EBMC to lead Operations and IT, wei li was building the decentralized web and has 7 years of work experience in technology sector as an engineer and program manager. Concern for hypergrowth and individualism from corporate capitalism pushed wei li's path towards ancestral healing, creative inquiry and engaged Buddhism - where they are actively finding a spiritual service through the Indigenous Land Back movement. wei li is currently a resident at Mangalam Center for Buddhist Research and completed a 300 hour/year long Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga program led by the Nyingma Institute.

email: weili at eastbaymeditation dot org