Jared Seide

Jared Seide is a non-profit leader, educator and innovator in compassion-based community-building practices. He is the Founding Director of Center for Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that utilizes the practice of Council to promote wellness and resiliency, to foster social and restorative justice and to nourish cohesive and thriving communities.
Career
Since 2001, Seide has designed, piloted, coordinated, and led Council-based programs within prisons, schools, assisted living facilities, youth groups, and a variety of non-profit and faith-based organizations and social service and law enforcement agencies, including the "Co-Mentoring Project” for emancipated foster youth, the "Social Justice Council Project” for the staff of community-based organizations, the “Inmate Council Program” throughout California Department of Corrections, and the Council-based "Wellness and Resiliency Skills Training" program for law enforcement and correctional officers. He has led Council programs at a dozen schools in Southern California and coordinated “Rite of Passage” retreats for a host of middle and high school youth, in addition to facilitating the Los Angeles-based “Council Collaborative Initiative" for educators.
Seide first discovered Council In the early 1990s when his daughter’s school was experiencing stress and racial tension as a result of the Los Angeles riots. As the President of the school’s Governing Board, he invited in The Ojai Foundation to introduce Council as a way to help quell the unrest. Following the introduction of Council to teachers, students, and community members, Seide saw a profound shift in the school’s culture and the creation of a more empathic and cohesive community. This experience led him to study the practice of Council and eventually work for The Ojai Foundation as a Senior Council Trainer and Initiative Coordinator. Seide was coordinator of the nine-member leadership team that relaunched the "Center for Council Practice" division of The Ojai Foundation.
In 2014, Seide led the creation of Center for Council as its own independent organization, based in Los Angeles. He serves as the organization’s Director. Council is a compassion-based attentional practice that fosters greater awareness of self and others and capacity for cultivating skillful communication, respectful relationships and ethical action; the practice of council is a foundational element of programs that promote wellness and resiliency, team-building and community engagement.
In 2015, Seide co-led the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Conference on integrating Council and SRM in California and Rwandan prisons. He was subsequently invited by the Rockefeller Foundation to be a Resident Fellow at the Bellagio. He has been a presenter at conferences and seminars, speaking on the integration of Council into varied arenas, including South by Southwest, California Rehabilitation Oversight Board, Association of Change Management Professionals, Bellagio Fellows Gathering, Monterey County Community Restorative Justice Commission, the Summit on Mindful Policing, Fetzer Institute’s Mindful Justice Conference and the Restorative Justice in Motion Conference, at Eastern Mennonite University. Seide has led trainings and retreats focusing on reconciliation and community-building around the world, including workshops in Rwanda, Colombia, Bosnia and Poland.
Seide holds a BA with honors from Brown University. He is a student of Bernie Glassman, Egyoku Nakao and Joan Halifax, a member of the Zen Center of Los Angeles, a sixth cohort graduate of the Chaplaincy Program of Upaya Institute Chaplaincy Program, and has served as a Spirit Holder for Zen Peacemaker Bearing Witness Retreats around the world.

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