Our Team

Sarah joined Zen Caregiving Project in 2022 and is the Chief of Staff. With more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector for both community and health services, Sarah brings a wealth of knowledge in cross-sector partnerships, fundraising, and sponsorships. She has been an adjunct professor teaching writing, journalism, and philanthropy courses at Whitworth University and Eastern Washington University.

Sarah is a writer having published articles in national journals and magazines on grief and loss as well as having co-written a chapter on child death in the United States for the graduate textbook, The World of Bereavement: Cultural Perspectives on Death in Families. She has also facilitated support groups in Eastern Washington through the MISS Foundation for the past 18 years bringing peer-to-peer support to families whose children have died.

Mary is the Supervising Instructor of Education Programs at Zen Caregiving Project. Over the past two decades, she has been dedicated to the organization’s mission, starting as a hospice volunteer and training facilitator. Mary’s personal experience as a family caregiver deeply influences her work.

Mary holds dual instructor certification in Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT™), from Stanford University School of Medicine, Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) as well as the Compassion Institute (CI), where she serves as a mentor to emerging instructors. Mary is trained in Buddhist chaplaincy and is also a certified instructor of the Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) program, created at the Mind and Life Institute.

Roy, Zen Caregiving Project's Executive Director, has been an educator and end-of-life caregiver since 1997. He trained with Zen Caregiving Project when it was known as Zen Hospice Project (ZHP) to become a volunteer and served at the bedside for six years at the Guest House facility before serving for seven years on San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital’s Palliative Care Ward. Roy served on the Zen Hospice Project board of directors from 2002 until 2008. In 2008, he completed a yearlong end-of-life caregiver training at the Metta Institute in Sausalito, CA.

A dedicated practitioner in the Soto Zen tradition, Roy is a student at the San Francisco Zen Center. Roy is certified by the Stanford University School of Medicine, Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), and the Compassion Institute as a Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT©) instructor.

Roy also guides wilderness-based rites of passage programs in partnership with EarthWaysLLC of Sebastopol, CA.

Alistair Shanks is the Volunteer Program Manager at Zen Caregiving Project where he has served since 2004, first as a hospice volunteer and training facilitator, and in his current staff position since 2016.

He completed his clinical residency, (CPE), at UCSF and currently serves as a chaplain at both the Parnassus and Mission Bay campuses.

He has presented on the subject of Grief and Healing at the Association of Professional Chaplains conference, the 2023 CDCR Chaplain Training, and Harvard Divinity School.

He currently serves as a volunteer facilitator with the Humane Prison Hospice Project, training incarcerated men and women in palliative and hospice care.

Past volunteer work includes leading mindfulness meditation sessions in the San Francisco County Jail and serving as a volunteer chaplain at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. He is a dedicated practitioner several Taoist Internal Arts including: Tai Chi, Qigong, and Ba Gua.