Our Staff

Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Project Staff

Cynthia Jurs, Executive Director

Cynthia is an authorized Buddhist teacher of “engaged Buddhism” who received formal Dharmacharya transmission from Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh in 1994. She has studied with many great Buddhist teachers and has spent much time in retreat practicing in both the Tibetan Vajrayana and Zen Buddhist traditions for 30 years. In 1990 she was introduced to the hermit and meditation master Ven.  Kushok Mangden, Charok Rinpoche, a 106-year-old lama living in a cave in Nepal and received the practice of the Earth Treasure Vases – a practice she has been carrying out ever since. She directed and produced the film, Turning Prayer Into Action: Indigenous Grandmothers Meet the Bioneers. She is president of the nonprofit organization, Alliance for the Earth, and directs the Open Way Sangha in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she practices meditation with others and leads retreats, rituals, classes and ceremonies.

Ven. Lama Ngawang Tsultrim Zangpo, Guiding Teacher, Earth Treasure Vase Lineage

Lama Tsultrim is a Nyingmapa Dzogchen Sherpa lama, born in Nepal and educated at Tholaka Tharling Dzogchen Monastery in the Mt. Everest region of East Nepal. He joined the monastery at age 5 and completed his training under the guidance of his father, H. E. Kyaprok Tulku Rinpoche and Venerable Kushok Mangden Rinpoche of Charok in Solu Khumbu, Nepal. He says, “My great-grandfather back seven generations was the great Dzogchenpa, the Ven. Lama Nyima Rinpoche. Since then my great -grandfathers in each generation have built monasteries, stupas and mani walls. My father, H.E. Kyaprok Tulku Rinpoche, a reincarnate lama, is also one of my teachers.” Lama Tsultrim holds the combined lineages of Rigdzin Jyatson Nyingpo, Rigdzin Godem, and Rigdzin Terdak Lingpa and has been teaching Western students and building stupas in Europe and the United States since 1981. He is the founder and resident lama of Dhongak Tharling Dharma Center in New Orleans and co-abbot, along with his father, of Tholaka Tharling Monastery and the Tharlingar Dzogchen Community, (Tolu Gompa) in the Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) region of Nepal.

Raji Mandelkorn, Media Manager / Spacebridge & Youth Communication Council Coordinator

Raji grew up in an Integral Yoga Ashram celebrating the beauty and truth in all religions. She maintains her yoga and meditation practice and is a certified Integral Yoga teacher. She received a BA in Documentary Studies at the College of Santa Fe with a focus on film production. Her senior thesis documentary film project, Amateur in Technoland, explores the pervasive environment around communication technologies, an environment in which the young adult and youth generations of today are living and growing up in. For this project, Raji conducted extensive research on new media platforms, social networking, community appraisal, and information distribution via cell phone and internet. She has since collaborated on television shows and independent feature films including The Last River, an environmental documentary about water challenges facing the Southwest. She hopes to continue to create conscious media that educates and inspires change.

Linda Ward, Production Associate / Pilgrimage Coordinator / Office Manager

Linda is a mother and grandmother who left the corporate business world of radio and telecommunications to become an experienced guide in indigenous shamanic healing traditions. She received her training from traditional Mexican healers and curanderas in Mexico, including her primary teacher, Dona Julieta Casimiro from Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca. For over 10 years, she has traveled regularly to study and practice there and has organized and led many group pilgrimages, ceremonial events and practice sessions both individually and in collaboration with the non-profit organization, Circle of Hearts. Linda was instrumental in organizing the visit of The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers to Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca at the invitation of Dona Julieta who is a member of that council. She is a skilled healing arts practitioner with a degree in Transformational Bodywork and Hakomi Body Centered Psychotherapy and is a certified massage therapist. She is a passionate photographer who’s interest in film led her to became Production Assistant on The Grandmothers Spacebridge and the documentary film based on this live ceremonial television event, Turning Prayer Into Action: Indigenous Grandmothers Meet the Bioneers. She joins the board and staff of Alliance for the Earth and the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Project offering “everything from aphids to zebras”.

Christian Leahy, Communications Support

Christian spent her childhood seeking refuge in the beauty of the Great North Woods of New England. A fierce love of the wild has been her guiding passion since. Currently, she is a professional writer, activist and the outreach coordinator for Split Estate, a feature-length documentary that maps a tragedy in the making as citizens in the path of a natural gas drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West struggle against the erosion of their civil liberties, their communities and their health. Leahy is the former executive director of the New Mexico Women’s Foundation. Prior to that, she served at the leading edge of progressive social change at Bioneers. In addition to work in communications and development, Leahy innovated two media-based programs at Bioneers, the Bioneers Moving Image Festival and Reel Change Agents: young people + cameras = changing the story.

Judy Herzl, Marketing & Development

Judy is thrilled to be part of the team bringing the Earth Treasure Vase Project into fruition. Judy is an artist, a designer, and a marketing specialist. Being able to use her marketing and outreach expertise in service to empower communities in their own healing brings her great joy. Judy has designed marketing and development strategies for businesses involved with eco-tourism, individual entrepreneurs, as well as for a local economy-based non-profit in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has produced materials for cultural and environmental organizations and designed books on water, art, film, and Hopi children’s stories. She has been a student of meditation for over 30 years, and is greatly moved by the universality of the practice and ritual of the Earth Treasure Vase, as it touches communities all over the globe.