This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register using the form below or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org

Featuring Donald Abrams, MD

Smith Center 25th Anniversary Conversation Series

The year 2021 marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Smith Center for Healing and the Arts. In celebration of this momentous achievement, we are launching a series of special conversations. Across the course of the coming year, members of our Smith Center family will join us to reflect upon Smith Center’s roots, examine its present programs and impact, and imagine what the future may hold for us at Smith Center and the larger world of integrative healing.

Our third conversation will be held Monday, April 12th from 6 – 7:30 pm (Eastern Time). We are honored to feature Donald Abrams, MD, Integrative Oncologist at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. Dr. Abrams will be interviewed by Smith Center’s Executive Director, Lisa Simms Booth.

We hope you will join us for the conversations in this special series. Please feel free to circulate this announcement and share with others the details of this upcoming conversation.

Tickets for this event will be $25 and will help raise money for Smith Center’s 25th Anniversary Fund.



Smith Center’s 25th Anniversary Conversation Series will be hosted throughout 2021.

Selected Themes:

  • Visionary Leaders in Integrative Care
  • The Facilitators’ View on Caring and Healing
  • Participants’ Perspectives
  • Envisioning the Future

Tickets for each conversation will be $25.


About Donald Abrams, MD

Donald I. Abrams, M.D. is the past chief of the Hematology-Oncology Division at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, an integrative oncologist at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. He graduated from Brown University in 1972 and from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1977.  After completing an Internal Medicine residency at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco, he became a fellow in Hematology-Oncology at the UCSF Cancer Research Institute in 1980 during the time that the first cases of AIDS were diagnosed. He was one of the original clinician/investigators to recognize many of the early AIDS-related conditions.  He conducted numerous clinical trials investigating conventional as well as complementary therapies in patients with HIV including therapeutic touch, Traditional Chinese Medicine interventions, medicinal mushrooms, medical cannabis and distant healing. His interest in botanical therapies led him to pursue a two-year Fellowship in the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona that he completed in December 2004. His particular passion in the field is nutrition and cancer. Since completing his Fellowship, Dr. Abrams has been providing Integrative Medicine consultation to people living with and beyond cancer at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. His integrative oncology interests are in medicinal mushrooms, Traditional Chinese Medicine interventions and nutrition. He co-edited the Oxford University Press textbook Integrative Oncology with Andrew Weil, M.D.. He is a member of the NCI PDQ CAM Editorial Board. Dr. Abrams was President of the Society for Integrative Oncology in 2010.

This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register using the form below or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org

featuring Shanti Norris

Smith Center 25th Anniversary Conversation Series

The year 2021 marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Smith Center for Healing and the Arts. In celebration of this momentous achievement, we are launching a series of special conversations. Across the course of the coming year, members of our Smith Center family will join us to reflect upon Smith Center’s roots, examine its present programs and impact, and imagine what the future may hold for us at Smith Center and the larger world of integrative healing.

Our second conversation will be held Monday, March 8th from 6 – 7:30 pm (Eastern Time). We are honored to feature Shanti Norris, Co-Founder and former Executive Director of Smith Center. Shanti will be interviewed by Smith Center’s Executive Director, Lisa Simms Booth.

We hope you will join us for the conversations in this special series. Please feel free to circulate this announcement and share with others the details of this upcoming conversation.

Tickets for this event will be $25 and will help raise money for Smith Center’s 25th Anniversary Fund.



Smith Center’s 25th Anniversary Conversation Series will be hosted throughout 2021.

Selected Themes:

  • Visionary Leaders in Integrative Care
  • The Facilitators’ View on Caring and Healing
  • Participants’ Perspectives
  • Envisioning the Future

Tickets for each conversation will be $25.


About Shanti Norris

Shanti Norris

Shanti Norris served as Executive Director of Smith Center for Healing and the Arts from 1996 – 2017. She initiated the Smith Center hospital Artist-in-Residence program and Healing Arts Gallery. She ran the weeklong retreats for people with cancer, and oversaw new initiatives, including the Faith-based Community Navigation project at Smith Center. Former Vice President of Kent Homeopathic Associates, she has an extensive background in complementary medicine and mind-body approaches to healing. She has taught meditation, yoga philosophy and stress reduction for over 35 years and underwent a formal ten-year mentorship with a renowned yoga master. She is a three-term member of CARRA, the patient advocacy program at the National Cancer Institute and a graduate of Project LEAD from the National Breast Cancer Coalition. She is a graduate of the Georgetown University Nonprofit Leadership certificate course and the James P. Shannon Leadership Institute in Minneapolis/St Paul. She is a former board member of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare and Chaired their Annual Conference in 2004. She is a founding board member of The Art Connection in the Capital Region and a founding member of Arts in Healthcare Advocates (AHA.) She is a frequent speaker on the healing power of the arts. Her formal art training began at New York University and The Cooper Union in New York City and includes running the fine art studio of artist Peter Max. She is a member of ArtTable, the mother of three adult children, and is a painter and sculptor.

This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register using the form below or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org

with Michael Lerner

Smith Center 25th Anniversary Conversation Series

The year 2021 marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Smith Center for Healing and the Arts. In celebration of this momentous achievement, we are launching a series of special conversations. Across the course of the coming year, members of our Smith Center family will join us to reflect upon Smith Center’s roots, examine its present programs and impact, and imagine what the future may hold for us at Smith Center and the larger world of integrative healing.

Our first conversation will be held Monday, February 8th from 6 – 7:30 pm (Eastern Time). We are honored that the speaker for our inaugural conversation will be Dr. Michael Lerner, co-founder of Smith Center. Dr. Lerner will be interviewed by Smith Center’s Executive Director, Lisa Simms Booth.

We hope you will join us for the conversations in this special series. Please feel free to circulate this announcement and share with others the details of this upcoming conversation.

Tickets for this event will be $25 and will help raise money for Smith Center’s 25th Anniversary Fund.



Smith Center’s 25th Anniversary Conversation Series will be hosted throughout 2021.

Selected Themes:

  • Visionary Leaders in Integrative Care
  • The Facilitators’ View on Caring and Healing
  • Participants’ Perspectives
  • Envisioning the Future

Tickets for each conversation will be $25.

About Michael Lerner

Michael Lerner

Michael Lerner is president and co-founder of Commonweal in Bolinas, California. Founded in 1976, Commonweal has program interests in health and healing, education and the arts, and environment and justice. www.commonweal.org.

Michael’s projects at Commonweal include the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, Healing Circles Global, The New School at Commonweal, The Resilience Project, The New School at Commonweal, and the Beyond Conventional Cancer Therapies website.

Michael is the author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer. The Commonweal Cancer Help Program was the subject of an hour-long documentary, “Wounded Healers,” part of Bill Moyers prize-winning PBS series, “Healing and the Mind.”

Michael is president of the Jennifer Altman Foundation and Advisor for the Barbara Smith Fund. www.jaf.org.  He is co-founder and president emeritus of Smith Center for Healing and the Arts in Washington, D.C. He is past chair of the Consultative Group on Biodiversity, co-founder and chair emeritus of the Health and Environmental Funders Network, and a past Board Member of Global Greengrants.  He is chair emeritus of the board of the Wildflowers Institute in San Francisco, which works with low-income diaspora communities to identify their internal sources of strength in the Bay Area and beyond.

A Harvard graduate with a doctorate from Yale, Lerner left teaching at Yale to found Full Circle, a residential center for at-risk children in Bolinas in 1972.  He founded Commonweal in 1976. He received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1984.

www.commonweal.org
www.tns.commonweal.org
www.healingcirclesglobal.org
www.bcct.ngo
www.omega.ngo
www.resilienceproject.ngo