BIO

 Dr. Charles Burack is a dynamic workshop leader, coach, counselor, and consultant.  He is also an award-winning educator, writer, poet, and scholar.  For three decades, Chuck has been committed to catalyzing individual and collective transformation that actualizes human potential grounded in Integrity and concern for the Greater Good. He is a professor and core faculty member at the JFK School of Psychology at National University and holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.  

Holistic Approach

 Chuck offers a holistic, integrative, and creative approach to human development and flourishing.  He specializes in facilitating the growth and well-being of the whole person--mind, heart, body, and spirit--in relationship with others and the wider world.  He has a deep passion for helping his clients and students clarify and manifest their missions, visions, and values.  

Drawing on his interdisciplinary background, Chuck integrates powerful insights and proven methods of modern psychology, neuroscience, the creative arts, and ancient wisdom.  These vital perspectives and practice support the cultivation of awareness and presence, intuition and creativity, emotional intelligence and compassionate communication.  Moreover, they empower service for Greater Good.

  Chuck believes that every person has unique, much-needed gifts to grow and share with the world.  A crucial need today is to use our gifts to build caring, responsible relationships with other people and with the Earth community.  We can accomplish this when we cultivate our essential qualities, work with limits and shadows, collaborate with open hearts and minds, and serve the ultimate presence or power in our lives. By honoring our diversity, we  create a better life for all!

        Educator & Workshop Leader 

     Dr. Burack is a pioneer in creative, contemplative, experiential, and holistic education.  He specializes in teaching adult learners, onsite and online, across the United States and around the world.   He sees education as a process of exploration and discovery, insight and understanding, growth and healing, empowerment and contribution.

  As an educator and workshop leader, Chuck helps others to clarify their passions, missions, visions, and values, to examine and evaluate diverse perspectives, and to actualize their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual capacities.  He facilitates the cultivation of self-awareness, mindfulness, presence, emotional intelligence, compassionate communication, inner wisdom, and creative expression.

 His teaching integrates vital wisdom and potent practices from psychology, neuroscience, the arts and humanities, and the world's wisdom traditions.

Interdisciplinary Professor

      As a professor and core faculty in the JFK School of Psychology at National University, Dr. Burack teaches interdisciplinary graduate courses in psychology, creativity, work/leadership studies, planning, world spiritualities, and professional development.  He oversees and helped launch the coaching and leadership specializations in the Consciousness and Transformative Studies program. He also created the Professional Project series that helps students design their career plan and implement a plan-related project. 

For thirteen years, Dr. Burack was an award-winning professor and core faculty at John F. Kennedy University.  He served as chair of Undergraduate Psychology, chair of Liberal Arts, and interim chair of Liberal Studies. 

    Dr. Burack has taught at many other educational institutions, including, UC Berkeley, St. Mary College, California State University-East Bay, UCS, California Institute of Integral Studies, Naropa University-Oakland,  Roosevelt University, Starr King School for Ministry, The Chaplaincy Institute, and Chabot College. 

Coach 

     Dr. Burack has served as a life/work, creativity, and communication coach for individuals with diverse backgrounds and careers.  As a life/work coach, he developed an innovative working visioning process that has helped hundreds of people discover and pursue their professional callings.  As a creativity coach, he has worked with educators, leaders, writers, novelists, and artists.  As a communication coach, he has supported solo practitioners and entrepreneurs as well as managers and executives at corporations like Microsoft and Wells Fargo Bank.     

Spiritual Counselor 

Since the mid-1990s, Chuck has been actively involved in interreligious education, arts, and counseling. A former rabbinical student, he was trained as an interfaith spiritual director at the Spiritual Directors Institute and as a lay volunteer interfaith chaplain at Kaiser-Permanente Hospital. He helped develop the interfaith curriculum at The Chaplaincy Institute for Arts and Interfaith Ministries and was the director of its spiritual direction program. He works with individuals, couples, and groups of diverse spiritual backgrounds--traditional, interreligious, agnostic, atheistic.  He is a member of the professional advisory group for the clinical pastoral education program at Kaiser-Permanente Hospital, Diablo Region.

   Author, Scholar, Writer, Poet  

  Chuck has published four books and authored dozens of articles, stories, and poems.  He has won international awards and prizes for his scholarship, personal essays, and poetry. Currently, he is working on two books: one on inner guidance and empowerment, and the other on sacred healing.  He holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and Master's degrees from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. 

Organizational Consultant

    As an organizational consultant, Chuck has provided services to UC Berkeley, Kirkland & Ellis law firm, Kaiser-Permanente Hospital, Kaiser Family Foundation, among others. He offers workshops on compassionate communication, mindfulness, creativity at work, and emotional intelligence, among others.  

For six years, Chuck worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.  As a communication consultant, he oversaw and edited the Bank's official communications, offered communication consulting services to managers and officers, wrote speeches for executive officers, and briefed the President and EVP on policy and program issues.  As a strategic planner, he facilitated departmental strategic planning sessions, cowrote the Bank's strategic plan, and provided analytical and communication support to the Senior VP of Planning.  As a human resource development specialist, he led organizational development initiatives for employee involvement in quality improvement and helped create the behaviorally-based system for assessing employee performance.

Academic Leader, Program Architect, Curriculum Designer

As chair of Liberal Arts and Psychology, Dr. Burack created JFKU's Liberal Studies program and restructured the Undergraduate Psychology program to make it uniquely integrative, holistic, and contemplative. The Liberal Studies program received international accolades for its cutting-edge emphasis on global perspectives and sustainability.  The Undergraduate Psychology program was recognized as a model for creating contemplative curricula in higher education.  Chuck also co-designed the Coaching specialization in the Consciousness and Transformative Studies program at JFKU/NU and helped develop the Graduate Liberal Studies program at St. Mary's College of California.  

Social Science Researcher

Dr. Burack worked for several years as a researcher at the University of Chicago Medical Center and the University of Illinois Center for Research in Criminal Justice.     

    Honors, Awards, Prizes 

   Outstanding Faculty Award (first recipient), College of Undergraduate Studies, John F. Kennedy University (2011-2012)

First Prize (first recipient), Songs of the Soul Poetry Contest, International Association of Sufism (2012)

 Annual Wayne Teasdale Memorial Lecture (inaugural presenter), Common Ground Interfaith Center, Deerfield, IL (October 2007)

Faculty Spotlight, St. Mary’s College of California, Moraga, CA, Spring 2006.

New Scholar Award (first recipient), D. H. Lawrence Society of North America (2000-2001)

 Graduate scholarships at UC Berkeley, Northwestern University, and University of Chicago

    Education    

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

M.A., Northwestern University

M.A., University of Chicago

B.A. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Spiritual Direction Institute

Lay Chaplain Training, Kaiser Permanente Hospital