The Team

Teresa Cowan Jones, M.Div.

Teresa Cowan Jones is an executive and wellness coach, an ordained progressive minister and spiritual director, former Director of Spiritual Wellness at Canyon Ranch Resorts, and founder of The Compassion Coalition, the Breakthrough Leadership Institute, and Sacred Space, community initiatives to build capacity for transformational leadership.

A fellow in the Public Voices Fellowship and Harvard University's Spiritual Innovator Cohort, she is also author of over one hundred tools for effectiveness and Building Compassionate Communities. Teresa holds a B.S. in Psychology and a Master of Divinity with highest honors from Vanderbilt University (1996). A professionally trained coach, she has served as coach and faculty of the Center for Progressive Leadership, a national nonpartisan leadership organization developing high-potential political leaders who can affect policy-making.  

Teresa is a certified facilitator in Compassionate Integrity Training (CIT) and was founding and lead coach for CIT at the Center for Compassion, Integrity and Secular Ethics at Life University. She also has served as an instructor at the Center for Integrative Medicine, a pastor and chaplain, faculty and spiritual director of the Hesychia School for Spiritual Direction, and developed and taught university courses in sociology. She has thirty years of professional experience in leadership development in both the public and private sectors. 

Teresa’s approach is based in the science of human development; the neuroscience of behavioral change; contemplative practices that help the mind manage the brain and circumvent burnout; cultivation of total intelligences (cognitive, emotional and contextual/spiritual); and a combination of neocortical (conceptual) and limbic (emotional/sustained) learning for long-term results. Through insight, compassion and humor, her integral, holistic approach emphasizes awareness and action.

Jennie Mullins, M.P.H.

Jennie Mullins has led numerous public health workforce development programs,community capacity building and leadership development initiatives with over ten years of experience with governmental, non-governmental, non-profit, tribal agencies and community coalitions. She served as the Project Director and Co-Investigator for the Southwest Public Health Leadership Institute from 2002-2010, which is part of national network of regional institutes funded by the CDC aimed at strengthening leadership capacity to address public health concerns. Jennie was instrumental in designing, developing, implementing and evaluating Leaders across Borders / Lideres a traves de las Fronteras, a binational leadership development program for community health professionals in the US-Mexico Border region. She also teaches collaborative leadership courses and workshops to strengthen community partnerships.

Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Jennie has worked in the fields of adult and adolescent alcohol and substance abuse treatment, sexual assault treatment and prevention, women's health, youth wellness and education, Elder health and Indigenous health. She has worked extensively with the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona, the Tohono O'odham Nation and the urban Indian health program in the Tucson Area on community health initiatives.

Jennie is a graduate of the National Public Health Leadership Institute, Year 13 and is the Chair-Elect for the National Public Health Leadership Development Network. She has served on the board of the Public Health Leadership Society since 2007 and is the immediate Past-President of the Arizona Public Health Association.

Lowell D. Jones, Ph.D.

Lowell is currently a senior engineer at Thorcon, a company pioneering the use of clean, safe nuclear energy and has served as an engineer at Lockheed Martin and Vice President of Engineering at the innovative startup AeroValve LLC.  Upon earning his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University, Lowell held senior positions in systems and mechanical engineering at multiple R&D and manufacturing firms where he honed his process design skills. His expertise in precision engineering developed his attentiveness to detail while his extensive work in systems modeling and analysis enhanced his whole systems perspective. These two capacities fused into an effectiveness for project management, and Lowell was selected to lead a cross-functional team undertaking a stringent $8.5M state-of-the-art opto-mechanical project for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. This intensive project further developed Lowell’s skills in scheduling, budgeting, and supervising large-scale projects.

Through those years of experience using formal Project Management techniques in the corporate arena and as a consultant, Lowell refined a gated process used for the development of products, services and for processes themselves. This disciplined method drives the deliverable(s) through feasibility, prototype, and pre-production phases before production occurs and services are rendered on a larger scale.

Lowell possesses a rare skill set that weds a capacity for complex problem solving with a keen emotional intelligence, a combination that makes him particularly suited for high-level management of both systems and people. This management ability directly served the Southwest Center for Economic Integrity, a nonprofit that promotes ethical profits and responsible commerce.