Tom Balles, M.Ac., L.Ac.(UK), Dipl.Ac.(NCCAOM)
A practicing acupuncturist since 1985, Tom Balles teaches in all three of Tai Sophia Institute’s master’s degree programs. He also facilitates one-on-one and group business workshops in team building, communication skills, improving work habits, conflict resolution, and leadership development. Mr. Balles is the author of Dancing with the Ten Thousand Things: Ways to Become a Healing Presence and “Cultivating a Healing Presence,” a guide.
David M. Blaiwas, M.A., M.Ac., Dipl. Ac.(NCCAOM)
Division chair for the Theory Division of the Master of Acupuncture program at Tai Sophia Institute from 2002 to 2007, David has been a primary instructor for Institute students over the past ten years. A graduate of the Traditional Acupuncture Institute, he also holds a certificate in Chinese herbology and received an M.A. in English literature from the University of Leeds. For seven years David served as president of the Maryland Acupuncture Society. He maintains private clinical practices in Takoma Park and Columbia, Maryland.
Edna Brandt, M.Ac., L.Ac., Dipl.Ac.
Edna Brandt has served on the faculty of Tai Sophia Institute for more than 20 years, practiced acupuncture since 1989, and since 1977 has taught Tai Chi and teacher training courses for the Tai Chi Foundation in the U.S. and the Netherlands. Throughout her rich career, which includes authoring Business Planning Book for Acupuncturists: Five Steps to a Flourishing Private Practice, Edna has pursued her interest in the roots of Chinese medicine, its history, and the Chinese medical and philosophical classics. Her studies include work with scholars of the Chinese classics such as Fr. Claude Larre and Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallée, and with "movers and shakers" who have shaped (and are continuing to shape) acupuncture in the contemporary world.
Robert M. Duggan, M.A., M.Ac.(UK), Dipl.Ac.(NCCAOM)
Robert Duggan is co-founder and president newmeritus of Tai Sophia Institute and a leading international voice on wellness and integrative medicine. A practicing acupuncturist since 1973, Mr. Duggan has served as a White House advisor and is the author of Common Sense for the Healing Arts. He holds a master’s degree in Human Relations and Community Studies from New York University and a master’s degree in Moral Theology from St. Joseph’s Seminary.
James A. “Jim” Duke, Ph.D.
As an economic botanist with a Ph.D. in botany from the University of North Carolina, Jim Duke had a 32-year career with the United States Department of Agriculture. While at the USDA, Dr. Duke developed the agency's Phytochemical and Ethnobotantical Databases. Today, Duke is a world-renowned ethnobotanist, owns and operates the Green Farmacy Garden, serves as distinguished lecturer in the Master of Science in Herbal Medicine program at Tai Sophia Institute, and continues to compile data on medicinal plants and update several of his 30 published books. Fluent in Spanish, Dr. Duke leads ethnobotanical trips to ecologically rich areas of the world. Duke is a Phi Eta Sigma and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), where he was elected distinguished alumnus some 50 years after his degree was conferred.
Sara Eisenburg, M.S.
Sara Eisenberg is a clinical herbalist practicing at Ruscombe Community Health Center in Baltimore, Maryland, where she offers herbal consultations, healing work, and workshops based in the Jewish wisdom tradition. With more than 30 years of experience as a guide, facilitator, and educator in the healing arts, Ms. Eisenberg also holds a Masters of Science degree in Herbal Medicine from Tai Sophia Institute. Prior to her studies at Tai Sophia she served for six years as Director of The Center for Health Enhancement, a full-service complementary care center at St. Joseph Medical Center.
Jamiel Hafiz, M.Ac., RYT
Jamiel Hafiz studied with Dr. Vasant Lad and at the Ayurvedic Institute, practiced Panchakarma at Maharishi International University, and apprenticed in naturopathy with Vaidya Agam Baghel. He also holds a Master of Acupuncture from the Tai Sophia Institute as well as a degree in evolutionary biology. Hafiz has taught ayurveda, yoga, bodywork, and physiology since 2002. He has a private practice in Ellicott City, Maryland.
Marta E. Hanson, Ph.D.
Marta Hanson writes on the history of disease, Chinese epidemiology, the geographic imagination, and arts of memory in Chinese Medicine. She completed her dissertation "Inventing a Tradition in Chinese Medicine: From Universal Canon to Local Medical Knowledge in South China, The Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century" in 1997 in the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her first academic position was as a historian of late imperial China in the Department of History, University of California, San Diego. She currently holds a position as an historian of East Asian medicine in the Department of the History of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Hanson is currently finishing her book manuscript entitled The Geographic Imagination in Chinese Medicine. All of her publications are available on her Web site.
Paige Lescure, J.D., LL.M., M.S.
Paige Lescure is a health-care attorney with the Health Care Law Group of Miles & Stockbridge, a large regional law firm headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Ms. Lescure is a 2009 graduate of Tai Sophia Institute’s Herbal Medicine master of science program and teaches law and ethics at Tai Sophia Institute and Goucher College. Her 20-year health-care practice has included representation of a diverse variety of clients in issues related to state and federal health regulatory law, healthcare contracting, HIPAA and state privacy law, as well as research and health law ethics. Increasingly, her work involves integrative medicine joint ventures with hospitals, physicians, and alternative and complementary health-care providers.
Helen Metzman, M.S.
Helen Lowe Metzman is the director of Jim Duke’s Green Pharmacy Garden. The Green Pharmacy Garden is an educational garden situated in Fulton, Maryland, that contains approximately 300 plants that have been researched and/or used traditionally for medicinal purposes. Ms. Metzman also works part-time for the Howard County Maryland Department of Recreation and Parks in the Natural Resources Division as a Natural Resource Specialist and an Environmental Educator. The study of natural history, plants, gardening, and art has been her lifelong passion, and she is able to integrate these passions in her work in the garden and for Howard County. Metzman is a graduate of the University of Vermont and of Tai Sophia Institute's Master of Science in Herbal Medicine program.
Andrew Pengelly Ph.D., RH(AHG), FNHAA
Andrew Pengelly completed professional training programs in botanical medicine, naturopathy, and homeopathy in 1983 at the Southern Cross Herbal School in Australia and obtained his doctorate in Food Science from the University of Newcastle in Australia in 2009. During this period, he practiced as a clinical herbalist, lectured widely in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, and was nominated a Fellow of the National Herbalists Association of Australia. Dr. Pengelly is the director of Tai Sophia’s herbal dispensary and is the principal investigator of a current Tai Sophia clinical trial on the medicinal qualities of culinary herbs.
Marianne Rothschild, M.D.
Marianne Rothschild is a board-certified family practice physician who blends varied traditions of healing to help patients achieve wellness and balance. Observing the maxim "Above all else, do no harm," she seeks the least disruptive and most natural interventions possible. These include: herbs and phytomedicines, nutritional medicine, flower essences, aromatherapy, acupuncture, and homeopathy. Marianne received her medical degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1990 with honors in emergency medicine and community and preventative medicine. She completed her family practice residency at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia. Marianne worked with the Johns Hopkins Medical Services Corporation until opening her holistic practice at Gaia Healing Center.
James Snow, RH(AHG)
James Snow is the director of the Master of Science in Herbal Medicine program at Tai Sophia Institute and a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild (AHG). He has been working in the field of herbal medicine since 1986, completing the herbal residency program at the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine in 1991. Mr. Snow has been in private clinical practice since 1994, blending traditional herbal wisdom with modern research perspectives. He has recently served as a reviewer for the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia.
Rebecca Snow M.S., LDN, RH(AHG), CNS
Rebecca Snow has been working in the field of herbal medicine since 1998. She is a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild. She completed coursework at the Dreamtime Center of Herbal Studies with herbalists Kathleen Maier, Matthew Wood, and Stephen Buhner. After receiving a Master of Science in Herbal Medicine from Tai Sophia Institute in 2004, Ms. Snow practiced as an herbalist and nutritionist at an integrative medical practice for 5 years. Ms. Snow is certified as a nutrition specialist (CNS) through the American College of Nutrition and is a licensed nutritionist in the State of Maryland.
Kevin Spelman, Ph.D., RH(AHG), MCPP
Dr. Spelman is a research scientist and core faculty member in the Herbal Medicine Program at Tai Sophia Institute. His work has included molecular biology and proteomics research investigating the activity of medicinal plants, as well as research that has included the analysis of nutrient levels in women of early childbearing age in West Africa, and malaria research at the University of Paris. Dr. Spelman has practiced an eclectic blend of clinical herbal medicine for 15 years, drawing on the medical sciences and Ayurvedic medicine. He is a member of the prestigious College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy in the United Kingdom and is a postdoctoral fellow at the Gerontology Research Center, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health(NIH).
Cheryl Walker M.L., MCC
Cheryl Walker is Program Manager for Tai Sophia Institute’s Health and Wellness Coaching graduate certificate programs, a faculty member in the Master of Arts in Transformative Leadership and Social Change program, and an independent leadership development consultant. Ms. Walker has a Master of Leadership from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and holds a Master Certified Coach (MCC) certification from the International Coach Federation.