Board

Board of Directors

Tara Mandala is governed by a Board of Trustees in collaboration with the Executive Council.

The Tara Mandala Board of Trustees:

Officers:

President  – Celeste Young
Vice President – Vacant
Treasurer – Suki Sohn
Secretary – Vacant

Board Members:

Lama Tsultrim, Dorje Gyaltsab Tulku Ösel Dorje, Lopön Pieter Oosthuizen, Catherine Bell

Lama Tsultrim Allione

Lama Tsultrim Allione, M.A. was one of the first American women to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun. She was ordained as a getsulma in 1970 by the 16th Karmapa. After four years as a nun studying Tibetan, practicing Buddhism and living in the Himalayas, Lama Tsultrim returned her monastic vows, married, and raised a family of three. She earned a M.A. degree in Buddhist Studies /Women’s Studies from Antioch University. She is the author of Women of Wisdom, a groundbreaking book on the lives of great Tibetan women practitioners. Her National Bestseller, Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict, (2008, Little, Brown & Co), connects the ancient principles of Buddhism with the modern psyche, based on the teachings of the eleventh century Tibetan yogini Machig Labdrön. A panel of distinguished Buddhist scholars and practitioners from the Association for the Promotion for the Status of Women in Bangkok, Thailand selected Lama Tsultrim Allione as a recipient of the 2009 Award for Outstanding Women in Buddhism. 

She founded Tara Mandala in 1993, a 700‑acre retreat center where a large three‑story mandala temple dedicated to the female Buddha of compassion, Tara, has recently been constructed. Tara Mandala offers a wide a variety of programs with a special focus on the lineage of Machig Labdrön.

Celeste Young

Celeste Young first came to Tara Mandala in 2017 for Kapala I at the invitation of a friend and never looked back. Today she is a student in the Magyu program, an Apprentice Teacher, and serves on the Mandala Committee for the Northern Sierra Sangha. She is a graduate student in the Master of Divinity program at Naropa University in Colorado and hopes to work as a hospice chaplain someday. Celeste also has experience leading global technology teams and startups on projects involving encyclopedias, personalized supplements, worldwide staffing, global marketing, Salesforce, and customer experience strategy. Her superpower is creating structure in chaos, and she particularly enjoys helping people work better together. She received her undergraduate degree in Social Anthropology from Harvard University.

Lopön Pieter Oosthuizen 

Lopön Pieter Oosthuizen is a teacher and entrepreneur and a long-time student of Tibetan Buddhism. He has been teaching various practices and retreats in Lama Tsultrim’s lineage in the US and abroad since 2006, offering a blend of incisive insight and genuine compassion. He co-leads the Boulder Tara Mandala Sangha with Dorje Lopön Charlotte Rotterdam, and serves as the President of the Tara Mandala Board. In addition to Lama Tsultrim Allione, Pieter studied with Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, Lama Tharchin Rinpoche, Adzom Paylo Rinpoche, and others. In the past, Pieter has brought innovative leadership to institutions such as Naropa University, where he served as Assistant VP for Academic Affairs, and Tara Mandala, where he served as Executive Co-director and Board Member. His years of leadership have been dedicated to creating healthy, creative, and effective organizations built on cultures of openness and authenticity. He is the founder and current CEO of Celsus Bio-Intelligence, a skin care company. Pieter received his Law degree in his native South Africa.

Suki Sohn

Suki Sohn is an entrepreneur and strategic financial advisor to numerous mission-driven businesses.  She first arrived at Tara Mandala in 2016 while writing her book on feminine leadership.  Since then, Tara Mandala became her spiritual home and Lama Tsultrim her source of deep wisdom and inspiration.  Today she is a student of Magyu and Osel Nyintig programs.  She is the founder and CEO of Kiban360, a strategic growth advisory firm focused on establishing financial infrastructure to enable data driven decision making for rapidly scaling businesses.  Suki received a B.A. in History at Bryn Mawr College and MBA at INSEAD, France.  She lives in Boulder, CO with her husband and two sons.

Dorje Gyaltsab Tulku Ösel Dorje

From his own personal retreat practice, Ösel Dorje has gained a strong appreciation for the importance of developing a deep understanding of the philosophical side of Buddhist study, while bringing it to life through meditation experience.  Inspired by stories of realized masters of the past, Ösel Dorje has spent time traveling throughout the Himalayas meditating in the sacred caves and power places of Guru Rinpoche. He has done 4 years of strict retreat, completed five ngöndros (the foundational practices) and the traditional Lama, Yidam and Khandro practices from the Longchen Nyingtig and Ösel Dorje Sangdzod terma cycles. As a wandering yogi, he completed a traditional 108 charnel ground chöd pilgrimage in Ladakh. Throughout his retreats he has been guided by his root teachers Adzom Paylo Rinpoche, Sang-ngag Rinpoche, and his mother Lama Tsultrim Allione. He is enthusiastic about Buddhist Philosophy, Tibetan Buddhist history, and biographies of realized yogis and yoginis. He holds a Master’s degree in Buddhist Studies from Kathmandu University and is currently working on a PhD. Ösel Dorje was enthroned as the Dorje Gyaltsab (Vajra Regent) of Tara Mandala in 2019.

Catherine Bell

Catherine Bell was introduced to Tara Mandala from one of her mentors, Dr. Beth Hedva, in 2020.  She was immediately magnetized.  She is currently in the Magyu and Ösel Nyingtig Programs.

Catherine Bell is the Founder and Author, of The Awakened Company. 

Catherine helps organizations create healthy corporate cultures through executive coaching, team strategy sessions, team facilitation, speaking, and online webinars. She is an award-winning Profit 500 Founder, serial entrepreneur and best-selling and award-winning author.  Catherine has an MBA from the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, a sociology degree from Western University, is certified in the Enneagram, and is a certified yoga instructor. She was a Jarislowsky Co-Fellow at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.  

She also has a certificate in the Not-for-Profit Board Essentials from the Institute of Corporate Directors.  She has sat on the Boards of the Distress Centre and Open to Grow.  She currently advises to the Science Centre and Impact Society.  As well, she founded The Awakened Project, a fund to help females get out of poverty by starting their own organizations. 

She is currently working on a book on the Enneagram and Creativity with Russ Hudson.