Charles Halpern has been a public interest entrepreneur since the late sixties. An honors graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law, he left a promising career in a corporate law firm, Arnold & Porter, to establish the first public interest law firm, the Center for Law and Social Policy, in Washington D.C., and to launch the public interest law movement.

He was the founding dean of the City University of New York School of Law, a school devoted to training public interest lawyers, and a member of the faculty at Georgetown and Stanford Law Schools. As the first president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, he developed an innovative philanthropic program which drew together support for social justice and inner exploration. His career has taken him from the inner circles of the legal establishment to the outer fringes of gritty New York politics, from vision quests in the New Mexican wilderness to the current debates about stem cell research.

During his years as a leader and innovator in academia and nonprofit organizations, Halpern has pursued a path of wisdom and inner growth, which has energized and informed his work. Currently, he leads meditation retreats for lawyers, serves as the Chair of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, and consults to nonprofit groups and foundations.

Halpern lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife of forty-five years, Susan Halpern, the author of The Etiquette of Illness. They have three adult children and six grandchildren. They meditate regularly and visit the remote waterways of California in their 16-foot canoe.