Mindfulness teacher, Community organizer, Author, Activist

Shelly Tygielski is a self-care activist and community organizer. Her work has been featured on CNN Heroes, in Forbes Magazine, CBS, ABC, NBC, The New York Times, Washington Post, and numerous other publications and media outlets.  After spending almost 20 years immersed in Fortune 1000 organizations in corporate America, and the past decade as a high-ranking executive in publicly and privately held companies, Shelly turned to teaching modern-life mindfulness full time. Committed to the democratization of meditation, her emphasis is on bringing mindfulness to corporations, public schools, nonprofits, and social justice and political organizations. She honed this focus over ten years of volunteering as a community organizer on campaigns, in social justice organizations, and on behalf of underserved school districts. An area leader with the Democratic Party in Florida, in 2016 Shelly co-founded South Florida Women Rise Up—a group of 3,000 women whose mission is to inform, organize, and activate local women around central issues affecting the community and this country. She also leads close to 15,000 meditators in Broward County, Florida, in a weekly guided meditation practice (that was originally in-person on the shores of Hollywood Beach but is now online). Shelly is also the Founder of Pandemic of Love, a global, grass-roots volunteer-led mutual aid community that has directly matched over 1.2 million people since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting for over $55 million in direct transactions. She is a trauma-informed mindfulness teacher, a certified Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute teacher, a community organizer, self-care activist and an author, with a forthcoming book, “Sit Down to Rise Up” due out in the Fall of 2021 from New World Publishing. Shelly also has an exclusive series of short-form mindfulness workshops available through audible.com. In June 2020, in partnership with Thrive Global and Walmart, Shelly is going on a 30-city “Summer of Love” tour across the United States, where she will visit some of the Pandemic of Love chapter communities.

Area of Inquiry: How do we actually bridge the divide of social injustice? What’s the model?