Board & advisory committee
As of April, 2026.
Alex Thorpe, Chair
Alex is a business person and philanthropist whose life has been positively impacted by attending an OpenGround MBSR course 10 years ago. Alex brings his care for people and community, his exceptional business expertise of over 20 years and his passion for mindfulness to the OpenGround project. He will provide the necessary financial, legal and logistical stewardship for the success of Openground into the future.
Timothea Goddard, Director
BA, Dip Psych (ANZAP) Workplace Trainer, Cert V, MBSR Cert. (UMass) TSY Yoga teacher (YA500H) PACFA reg. AEDP Level 1, IFS Level II
Timothea is the founding director of the original OpenGround (established in 2004) and is recognised as a pioneer in bringing evidence-based mindfulness programs to Australia over the past 20 years. She has worked in psychotherapy private practice for 35 years having trained in humanistic, psychodynamic, body-based and systemic ways of exploring challenges in life and relationships.
She is a specialist in trauma-informed practice. She is also a founding director of the Mindfulness Training Institute – Australia and New Zealand – a not-for-profit which offers teacher training in Mindfulness Based Programs. She has been practicing yoga and meditation (in the Vipassana tradition) since her early twenties, having also spent some years practicing Zen and Aikido.
Elizabeth Granger, Director
BEc, LLB, Dip. Som. Psych. PACFA Reg., MTI Reg, IFS Level II
Elizabeth is a lawyer, an experienced trauma-informed psychotherapist and lead teacher for OpenGround and is one of the first people trained to teach MBSR in Australia. She has worked for Openground for the past 16 years as a teacher and the Director of Organisational Programs. In this capacity she has led many successful mindfulness and leadership programs to all levels of organisations such as Deaken University, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Anglicare.
She has also pioneered the Mindfulness for Veterans Program which was independently researched and found "Strong, clinically meaningful and lasting changes were observed from baseline to follow-up in PTSD symptoms, anger reactivity and psychological distress. Participants also experienced beneficial and lasting changes in their relationships, which they commonly attributed to being more present, open and accepting, and felt to be the direct result of the mindfulness training." She has also led the first 8-week mindfulness course to Federal Parliamentarians and staffers. She brings enormous energy and enthusiasm to her work with people and organisations. She has long practice experience in the Vipassana tradition.
Advisory Council
As of April 2026
The people who shape and guide this work represent some of the most thoughtful, experienced, and dedicated minds at the intersection of medicine, mental health, mindfulness, and human flourishing.
Our Advisory Council brings together clinicians, researchers, educators, and practitioners whose careers span neurology, psychology, physiotherapy, public health, and sustainability - united by a shared conviction that evidence-based mindfulness has a profound role to play in how we understand and care for ourselves and one another.
Each member contributes not only deep professional expertise, but a lived relationship with mindfulness practice - people who have not simply studied these approaches from the outside, but have been shaped by them from within. They bring international training, decades of clinical experience, and a commitment to rigorous, compassionate, whole-person care.
Together, they offer this organisation a rare breadth of perspective - from the neuroscience of attention and trauma to the governance of sustainable systems; from remote Indigenous communities to the lecture halls of leading universities; from chronic pain research to the frontiers of workplace mental health.
We are honoured to be guided by their wisdom.
Dr Gillian Deakin
Dr Gillian Deakin is a rare force in medicine — a GP, educator, author, holds a Masters of Public Health and a PhD, and is mind–body specialist who brings clarity and compassion to the often-misunderstood world of functional disorders. Her work bridges cutting-edge science with whole-person care, drawing on psychoneuroimmunology, trauma-informed approaches, and the body’s own stress systems. She is active in medical education at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and has been active in organisations in which she can express her passion for social justice, including the Medical Association for Prevention of War, Médecins Sans Frontières, and working with remote Indigenous communities and refugees in war-torn countries.
Dr. Shuk-Wah Helen Ma
GP, Ph.D.
Helen is a clinical psychologist who began her clinical work in 1987 across Hong Kong and Sydney hospitals. Helen started practicing mindfulness meditation in the early 1990s. When research in the late 1990s confirmed mindfulness enhances physical and mental health, she pursued comprehensive training in MBSR, MBCT, Interpersonal Mindfulness, MyMind, and .b Foundations.
On Prof. Jon Kabat-Zinn's recommendation, she completed her Ph.D. in MBCT at Cambridge University under co-founder Dr. John Teasdale in 2002.
Helen founded the Hong Kong Centre for Mindfulness, offering MBCT teacher training with Oxford Mindfulness Centre and MBSR Teacher Training after certifying at UMass Center for Mindfulness. She has supervised mindfulness teachers and mentored supervisors.
An International Colleague of the Oxford Mindfulness Foundation and Global Mindfulness Collaborative member, Helen now resides in Sydney, transitioning from active teaching to caring for her husband. She remains grateful for her mindfulness practice guiding her through this tender season.
Dr Ross Carne
B.A., M.Soc.Sc., Ph.D.
Ross is a neurologist and clinical neurophysiologist, and holds a Doctorate of Medicine investigating brain imaging in epilepsy, and a Masters in Medical Education. He has held positions as Foundation Director of Clinical Studies at Deakin University School of Medicine, and Clinical Sub Dean with St Vincent's Hospital, University of Melbourne.
Ross has a strong interest in clinician wellbeing. He is a Fellow of the Australasian Society for Lifestyle Medicine, a movement which focuses on implementation of evidence-based lifestyle interventions in disease and in health.
Ross developed an interest in mindfulness some 10 years ago, prompted then by his patients with epilepsy, and questions around the relationship of focused attention and seizures. He has since gone on to gain international certification in programs including the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program, and the Mindfulness in Medicine Program through Uni of Rochester, New York. He has taught these programs now for some years to medical practitioners at all career stages.
Dr Larissa Bartlett
B.A. (Soc), B.Med.Sc.(Hons), PhD (Workplace Mental Health)
Larissa is the Mind Games Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Menzies Institute for Medical Research. She combines a passion for psychosocial health with scientific expertise in psychometric measurement, public health and behaviour change research, and program evaluation. Her doctorate focused on workplace delivered mindfulness-based interventions for stress, mental health, wellbeing and performance. Her ongoing mindfulness research includes a focus on its relationship with health risk factors, disease and multimorbidity, and on measuring the effects of mindfulness on behaviours that can impact others.
Larissa established the ISLAND Project, a large, 10-year public health study of over 15,000 older Tasmanian residents aiming to reduce dementia incidence, and is leading the Working Well study, to benchmark the capabilities in Tasmania’s employing organisations for managing worker mental health and inform government policy and services.
Larissa developed an interest in mindfulness after discovering the transformative effects of formal training and practice in 2011. She is registered to teach the MBSR program by the Mindfulness Training Institute of Australia and New Zealand and offers courses and custom programs that teach mindfulness principles, skills and practices in workplaces and in community.
Dr Anita Amorim
BPhysio (Hons), PhD
Anita is a Senior Lecturer in the Physiotherapy Discipline at the Sydney School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney, where she holds teaching, research, and leadership responsibilities. She completed her PhD in Health Sciences, followed by a postdoctoral research fellowship in Public Health at the University of Sydney.
Anita’s research focuses on the evidence-based management of chronic musculoskeletal pain, with a particular interest in integrating behavioural science, mindfulness, and lifestyle-based approaches into pain care. She has led clinical trials and observational studies investigating effective, non-pharmacological interventions for chronic pain, including mindfulness-based interventions, health coaching, and physical activity programs. Her research aims to translate these interventions into real-world healthcare settings, reducing unnecessary healthcare utilisation and improving patient outcomes. Anita has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and has presented her findings at national and international conferences. Her research has been cited in high-impact scientific literature and has attracted international media attention, including features in The Telegraph UK. Currently, she is leading research on the role of mindfulness in pain management, including the integration of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) into clinical practice.
Her expertise in pain research, behaviour change, and implementation science positions her at the forefront of innovative approaches to chronic pain management. She is passionate about improving the quality of life for individuals with chronic pain and advancing patient-centred, evidence-based solutions in healthcare.
Professor Emerita Cynthia Mitchell AO
B.E. (Chem. Hons I), PhD (Biotech), Dip. Bus. (Governance), FTSE, FIEAust
Cynthia is Professor Emerita at UTS, and sole proprietor of ‘the good ancestor’ (yes, it is in honour of Daverick Leggett's poem). She is passionate about for-purpose work of many kinds. Her work is mostly associated with making more sustainable the infrastructure that enables us to live well, and historically has covered strategy, governance, planning and decision-making, and evaluation, especially in the water sector.
Along the way she received many awards, including an Honorary Doctorate from Chalmers University in Sweden and an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). For many years, she has served on the national Community Directors Council. She is currently Chair of the Peter Cullen Water and Environment Trust.
Her interest in mindfulness is both personal and professional. Although Cynthia has been meditating since the late 90s, it was only when she enrolled in OpenGround’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program in 2020 that she grasped the depth of what mindfulness had to offer, so she certified as an MBSR teacher.
For Cynthia, mindfulness is a powerful means for growing our reflexivity, and that matters because reflexivity is both the muscle that opens the space required to work across difference, and a key enabler for initiatives to fly high above expectations, both of which are essential as we turn towards regenerative futures.