Over the past 15 years I’ve worked with purpose-driven teams to build organizations that bring mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and compassionate leadership into education, business, government, and the social sector.
These efforts have reached hundreds of thousands of participants across more than forty countries through scalable training programs and global networks of leaders, fellows, and facilitators.
Peter Bonanno, Ed.M.
I specialize in building nonprofit and b-corp startups, supporting and structuring them to grow from inspired ideas to sustainable organizations that can share their good work at a larger scale.
Over the past 15 years I have been a co-founder or founding team member of 8 different organizations, with diverse startup responsibilities typically centered around:
Designing flagship learning programs and curricula
Creating certification and teacher training programs
Building scalable delivery models through hybrid in-person and online learning
Developing mission, messaging, and program strategy
Leading strategic partnerships, fundraising, and research
In some cases I serve as a founding team member, in others I work as a consultant helping organizations evolve into their next phase of growth.
In addition to my organization-building work, I facilitate workshops and retreats on mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and purpose-based leadership.
Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute
Growing a global network of mindfulness and emotional intelligence facilitators.
Designed and launched the teacher training model that enabled the Search Inside Yourself program—originally developed at Google—to grow into a global nonprofit leadership institute. Today a network of more than 1,000 trained teachers deliver programs in over 40 countries, and have reached more than 500,000 participants.
Bhutanese Ministry of Education
Collaborated with Bhutanese Ministry of Education to bring mindfulness and emotional intelligence programs to all 10,000 of the country’s primary and secondary school teachers, by training and certifying 120 Bhutanese trainers.
United Nations’ Mindfulness Program
Bringing mindfulness-based resilience to UN workers.
Designed and taught Peace on Purpose training, bringing mindfulness-based resilience and well-being skills to all levels of United Nations staff.
Center for Compassionate Leadership
Designed and launched the organization’s first facilitator certification program, training an international cohort of leaders now bringing research-based practices for compassionate leadership & culture building to healthcare systems, education networks, and public institutions. Alumni have gone on to establish “compassion hubs” at institutions like Huddersfield University and the Alberta Teacher’s Union.
The Thich Nhat Hanh School of Interbeing
Advisor for innovative new school in California, USA that integrates mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and nature into the culture of a K-8 school, which serves as a “living laboratory,” serving families locally while planting seeds globally for a new model of whole-school contemplative education.
Bridge of Hope Summit
Organized “Bridge of Hope 2025,” a free global online summit for humanitarian workers facing disruption.
Moderated conversations and interviews on the topics of resilience, purpose, and reimagining the future of humanitarian work with 13 leaders in the humanitarian space for 250+ registrants from 39 countries.
Simple Habit
Recorded original meditation content for Simple Habit app, played over 500,000 times by listeners.
Balance
Created innovative interactive meditation concept for mindfulness app Balance. Balance won Google Play's Best App of 2021.