Alka Arora has been a spiritual practitioner for almost three decades and is instrumental in creating EnlightenNext’s women’s programs. She has been married to Andrew Cohen since 1986 and has been a student since Andrew began teaching. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, Alka received a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Bombay University. Later she studied yoga and moved to Bangkok, Thailand, where she was a yoga instructor for several years. Living in Thailand, Alka began meditating and became inspired to pursue a spiritual path. Upon returning to India, she met Andrew, at that time a fellow spiritual seeker, and they traveled throughout India for two years visiting ashrams and teachers. Alka currently lives at the EnlightenNext World Center in Lenox, MA, working closely with Andrew. She is passionate about exploring the challenges and potentials for women on the path of Evolutionary Enlightenment, and has been instrumental in creating EnlightenNext’s women’s programs. She is a senior instructor of Evolutionary Enlightenment, and a mentor of other instructors. Alka also oversees landscape design for EnlightenNext’s 220-acre property.
Alka Arora
Amy Edelstein
Amy Edelstein is Executive Assistant to Andrew Cohen and a Codirector of EnlightenNext’s Global Council. Amy has been a dedicated practitioner of Evolutionary Enlightenment since 1986 and has worked closely with Cohen in numerous capacities. Over recent years, she has contributed in key ways to the creation of dynamic governance and organizational systems for EnlightenNext that reflect the values and principles of Evolutionary Enlightenment. As one of the senior editors for EnlightenNext magazine for five years, Amy authored numerous pieces on the great wisdom traditions and their relevance in today’s world, interviewing contemporary spiritual leaders including the Dalai Lama, Ammachi, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and Brother Wayne Teasdale. She most recently served as part of the senior management team as Communications Director and is currently working with Cohen on his forthcoming book on Evolutionary Enlightenment. She lives with her husband, Jeff Carreira, in Lenox, Massachusetts, and is the founder of an award-winning online copywriting business, Ascent Copywriting.
Mary Adams
Mary Adams, a spiritual practitioner since the mid-seventies, is EnlightenNext’s Retreat Director and one of Andrew Cohen’s first students. After graduating from Australian National University with a degree in Asian philosophy and language, Mary lived in India for several years, studying with some of the most revered teachers of this century, including Nisargadatta Maharaj and J. Krishnamurti. She later moved to England, where she was cofounder and board director for an international retreat facility and became a practicing psychotherapist. Mary met Andrew Cohen in 1986 and moved to the US in 1988 to join him as one of the founding members of EnlightenNext. Over the next two decades, she played many roles at EnlightenNext, including cofounding the first London center and supporting the establishment of centers in Europe, the US, and Australia. Mary was also co-director of EnlightenNext’s international speakers series Voices from the Edge. Passionate about the potential for this work to bring about real change in the world today, Mary gives public talks and leads seminars on Evolutionary Enlightenment in the US and abroad.
Elizabeth Debold
Elizabeth Debold, EdD, is Senior Editor of EnlightenNext magazine, as well as an author, internationally renowned gender researcher, and cultural commentator. Her bestselling book, Mother Daughter Revolution: From Good Girls to Great Women, was heralded by Gloria Steinem and Carol Gilligan as “the book women have been waiting for.” Elizabeth received her doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University, where she was a founding member of the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development, directed by Dr. Carol Gilligan. Elizabeth has been sought after as an expert on girls, women, and the evolution of gender roles by major media outlets in the US and abroad and has lectured in the US, Canada, and Europe. She has made multiple appearances on Oprah, Good Morning America, and NPR, and was featured in a major Lifetime documentary on girls’ development. She has also been a consultant for numerous films and television programs, as well as to foundations, nonprofit educational organizations, corporate law firms, and businesses. Elizabeth has taught at Harvard University, the New School for Social Research, and the Graduate Institute, where she was Academic Director of the Master of Arts program in Conscious Evolution. Her work has appeared in academic publications, popular media, and international anthologies as well as in EnlightenNext magazine. She is under contract for a new book, tentatively titled The Evolution of Love: Men, Women, and the Possibility of Transformation, to be published by Pantheon. At EnlightenNext, Elizabeth teaches and develops programming on the evolution of gender and the next women’s liberation. She has been a student of Andrew Cohen’s since 1996.
Ros Bennett
Rosalind Bennett is the principal creator of EnlightenNext’s video productions. After a highly successful career as an actress in the UK, on stage and television as well as in cinema, she decided to go behind the camera, and has been a key figure in EnlightenNext’s audio/video department for the past decade.
Ros was born in Manchester, England. She met Andrew Cohen in 1994 and moved to the US in 2002. Over the years, she has traveled extensively with Cohen around the world, working closely with him to document the unfolding and development of his teachings. She is passionate about transmitting Cohen’s vision of a new enlightenment through the medium of film and video in order to affect as many people as possible with this miraculous potential for human society. She and her husband, actor Linus Roache, divide their time between Lenox, Massachusetts, and New York City.
Ellen Daly
Ellen Daly is an editor and writer who has worked closely with Andrew Cohen and EnlightenNext magazine since 2000. A student of Evolutionary Enlightenment since 1996, as well as Andrew Cohen’s editor for almost a decade, Ellen has developed a unique perspective on how his philosophy and vision has evolved and developed. She is currently editing a book of teachings from Cohen’s talks and retreats. Ellen received her degree in literature from the University of London, and runs a successful consulting and writing business, providing creative collaboration and publishing know-how to authors in the fields of spirituality and business. She lives with her husband, EnlightenNext Executive Editor Carter Phipps, in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she enjoys competing in local triathlons and long-distance cycling events.
Katrin Karneth
Katrin Karneth is Operations Manager for the EnlightenNext Center in Frankfurt and Publisher of the German edition of EnlightenNext magazine. She is a senior instructor of Evolutionary Enlightenment courses. Katrin grew up in East Berlin, in a secular family without any religion or higher guiding principle. When the Berlin Wall came down, she experienced the exhilaration of a kind of freedom she had never known. But in the years following she realized that real freedom is not found in outer circumstances but is an inner matter. Katrin turned her attention to spiritual exploration and in 1994 met Andrew Cohen at a retreat in India. This meeting changed her perspective on her own life and on human development. She became an active student of Evolutionary Enlightenment, and cofounded the first EnlightenNext center in Cologne, Germany. Later, she spent five years at the Amsterdam center supporting EnlightenNext’s work in Holland, and returned to Germany as part of the management team when the center moved from Cologne to Frankfurt.
Kyrsten Perry
Kyrsten Perry is a leader of EnlightenNext’s London Center and also Director of The Window, the venue rental business arm of the London Center. Kyrsten met Andrew Cohen in Australia in 1995 and has been a student and an active member of EnlightenNext since then. She has always had a love for art and did her undergraduate and postgraduate work at Sydney University in visual arts and philosophy, but most of her career has focused on social activism. Passionate about creating social change through politics, she worked for several years for the Australian federal government as Assistant to the Federal Minister for Consumer Affairs, Sydney Secretary of the Youth Wing of the Australian Labor Movement, and an advisor on aboriginal affairs and women’s issues. Since 1997 when she moved to London, Kyrsten has had several roles at the EnlightenNext Center, including managing EnlightenNext’s international speakers’ series Voices from the Edge and developing relationships with other spiritual alliance groups in the UK. She is currently the Director of The Window, a thriving venue rental business at EnlightenNext’s London Center and leads workshops on Evolutionary Enlightenment and meditation in the UK and Europe. She is married to Chris Parish, Managing Director of the London Center.
The Ten Agreements for Evolving Women:
Evolving Women: