Scheherzade van Aarle (INNERSPACE Mindfulness/Meditation) & Erin McCarthy (Compassion Collective)

Scheherzade (Sher) van Aarle is the Founder of INNERSPACE. Her mission is to educate on the connection between mindfulness and compassion, with happiness, leadership, public policy and world peace. She teaches and speaks on mindfulness (trained in Mindful Self- Compassion from UC San Diego), and mindfulness for modern leadership. Her talk Mindfulness for Big Thinkers: Innovation, Inclusivity and Happiness was featured at the federal government’s first Inclusiveness Symposium. She serves as Mindfulness Expert on the Advisory Group for the APEX (Association of Public Sector Executives) Leadership Symposium through which she enabled 800 executives to experience mindful and compassionate leadership at the 2018 Symposium. She also served as Advisor and speaker with A Mindful Leader Symposium. A trained economist, Scheherzade spent several decades with the Government of Canada supporting gender equality, the small business sector, new immigrants, affordable healthcare and foreign direct investment.  In 2017 INNERSPACE held the first mass meditation in history on Parliament Hill (Ottawa) on the UN’s International Day of Peace (Peace Day) in partnership with Jon Kabat-Zinn. Over 1000 people attended this free gathering and it was featured on the front page of the Globe and Mail. For Peace Day  2018 she guided the meditation for hundreds of men and women who came together on the Hill between torrential rains and tornados, in a radical act of peacemaking. She has also meditated with federal Ministers and Members of Parliament inside the House of Commons. For Scheherzade mindfulness is a superpower that enables her to lead her best and happiest life even when facing those inevitable tough times.

Erin McCarthy, Ph.D. is a trained teacher of Mindfulness Based Symptom Management  and Mindful Self-Compassion, she is also Professor and Chair of philosophy at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. An educator for over two decades, Erin divides her time between her work as a scholar-teacher at the university, conference engagements and her mindfulness teaching both on her campus and in the Ottawa area where she lives. She has taught classes and given workshops both locally and internationally.  Author of the Book Ethics Embodied, her teaching and writing brings together eastern and western philosophies and practices. A long time meditator, Erin came to teach mindful self-compassion and mindfulness through her interest in and scholarship on Contemplative Education. After completing her training she formed the Compassion Collective with Robin Beardsley, MD and Brittany Glynn, Ph.D. to further the practice and application of mindfulness principles in all aspects of life.  She has a particular passion for how mindfulness modalities help in education, parenting and with issues of social justice. She is the Co-Chair of the 2018 International Symposium for Contemplative Research. She is continually inspired by the transformations that these mindfulness modalities afford their practitioners…herself included!