Elizabeth J. Coleman Esq., President of Professional Stress Management Solutions, Ltd, and an attorney with other thirty years’ experience in litigation and legal management, studied Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction from spring, 2001 through spring, 2007 at the Center. In June, 2005, she participated in a seven-day professional training program modeled on the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School under the direction of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and Dr. Saki Santorelli. The program was co-sponsored by the Institute for the Advancement of Human Behavior, whose continuing education program has been approved by numerous medical institutions, and by the Omega Institute. Ms. Coleman teaches Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction to individuals from every profession and to young people. She regularly teaches the eight-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course, and has done numerous workshops for judges and attorneys as well. Examples of the work Ms. Coleman has done in training professionals in stress management include being a regular lecturer on stress management at CLE programs of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, working with the Institute for Continuing Judicial Education in Georgia, and training attorneys in New York law firms.

Ms. Coleman served from 1998 to 2001 as national civil rights director at the Anti-Defamation League. From 2001 to 2005 she was Executive Director of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, where she supervised, among other things, the New York State Trial Lawyers’ Institute’s extensive legal education programs. Ms. Coleman was a co-founder and Director of the Senior Citizens Law Project of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society; a consumer law specialist at the Georgia Legal Services Program; and a partner at the law firms of Martin, McDuffie & Coleman and Stroup & Coleman. She is a past Chair of the Board of the National Women’s Law Center and of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and was Vice-Chair of President Clinton’s Export Council. Ms. Coleman was a recipient of the New York Women’s Agenda 2004 Star Award and also received NOW New York’s Woman of Power & Influence Award in 2003. She is co-author of COMMERCIAL AND CONSUMER WARRANTIES: DRAFTING, PERFORMING AND LITIGATING (Matthew Bender 1987).

Ms. Coleman is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Swarthmore College.

A licensed psychologist, Pat Vroom Ph.D. has served as Director of Integral/ Complementary Medicine at Capital Health System in the Princeton-Trenton NJ area. She joined this large community hospital to create a patient-oriented service for better collaboration between traditional and complementary medicine in the treatment of the whole person.

Previously at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in NYC, Dr. Vroom established and led the Mind-Body Program within the Integrative Medicine Center for seven years, including clinical and research programs to support cancer patients, caregivers, pediatric, and high-risk populations. She developed a hypnosis-based pain management program for both adult and pediatric oncology populations. In a pediatric portion of the program, children using self-hypnosis were able to reduce their pain medication by almost 50%. Dr. Vroom initiated a Pre-Surgical Hypnosis Program at MSKCC to replicate current published research, including the reduction of pre and post surgical anxiety, post surgery pain medication use, and shortened hospital stays. She developed the AWARE program for MSKCC's Special Surveillance Breast Program for women at high risk for breast cancer, combining mindfulness meditation with education in cancer prevention to lower cancer-anxiety. Participants reported reductions in daily anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, and increases in life satisfaction.

Dr. Vroom's psychotherapy practice focuses on teaching individuals and groups to access their own inner strengths for growth and healing. She is trained in Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Ericksonian Hypnosis, Mindfulness Meditation, and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression. She uses mind-body strategies to manage stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and other symptoms of illness (e.g. surgical anxiety, menopause, cancer related fatigue, chemo-brain, IBS, high blood pressure), to facilitate positive behavior change, reduce pain, and improve coping.

Prior to becoming a psychologist, she spent over 25 years in corporate world as a computer scientist and R&D manager. She earned her doctoral degree at Columbia University Teachers College and her B.S. in mathematics at Denison University. She has had a meditation practice for over 15 years.