Sister Jewel (Chan Chau Nghiem) grew up in the US and Kenya, in an intentional community that practiced simple living and engaged in village development projects worldwide. She remembers contests with the other children on who could use the least amount of water for bathing. She was ordained as a nun by Thích Nhất Hạnh in 1999. She will spend the first half of 2015 teaching mindfulness courses at Schumacher College in the UK, an environmental college for graduate students, and then lead mindfulness retreats in Europe and the US.