Staff

Deep appreciation to the small but mighty team that helps us connect and collaborate with our community.

Click on their picture to read more about each Staff member or scroll down the page.

Jovan Sage is the Compassion Community Lead for the Center for Compassionate Leadership, who is a heart-centered facilitator and teacher who guides people back to themselves. Jovan’s heart work bridges leadership development and advocacy while working within their communities around mind and body connection in their personal healing and development.

The threads of their practice are woven at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, sustainability, agriculture, and healing justice. Their expertise includes event planning, project management, and curricula development; meditation, mindfulness, and breathwork; trauma-informed yoga, movement, and meditation; death midwifery, grief and loss support.

Sage holds a B.A. in Communications Studies and Production from the University of Missouri.

Miriam Lesa is the Director of Teacher Training and Strategic Growth at the Center for Compassionate Leadership. She is a leadership coach and strategy / operations leader, with long-standing experience in project, program and change management.

Miriam has extensive experience working with senior executives, teams, and organizations navigating enterprise transformations, including as Chief of Staff to two successive Presidents at adidas Canada. That same orientation shaped her founding of the Women and Mindfulness Network at adidas Canada, where program leadership, community-building, and care went hand in hand.

Alongside her operational career, Miriam practices yoga, meditation, and Ayurveda, and holds an Accredited Executive Coach credential, as well as multiple Yoga Teacher certifications. She is the founder of MindLead Advisory, a coaching and leadership development practice rooted at the intersection of scientific insight, contemplative wisdom, and practical action steps.

She is trilingual in German, English, and Spanish. Miriam holds a double Master's Degree in International Business from Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid (Spain), and the European School of Business, Reutlingen (Germany).

Jeffrey Lee Simons is the Community Content Director at the Center for Compassionate Leadership. He is responsible for the sourcing and delivery of relevant research, articles, and events that inform and inspire our global community of compassionate leaders.

Jeffrey is a skillful wordsmith and marketer who has been lucky enough to enjoy a career on the business side of things people do for fun, from selling wooden ship models and radio control cars in the 80s, to evangelizing Marvel Comics in the 90s, to getting people talking about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk in the 21st Century. Along the way, he’s co-written a book on cause-related marketing, helped clients like Discovery Channel find their audiences, MasterCard and Citibank conquer the worlds of consumer finance, and the United Nations and Save the Children make the world a better place. Jeffrey received his Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University (Washington, DC).