1. August 22, 2014
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing as a professional reference for Ms. Anakha Coman, whom I met in 2008 through
our shared commitment to promote health, creativity and well-being among individuals,
communities and organizations. Over the past seven years, I have witnessed her make cutting
edge contributions on a national, global and local stage in training and courageously modeling
mindfulness-based skills and mindsets in business and other environments. Her highly effective
educational approach powerfully and beautifully integrates the basic and professional
development sciences underlying mindfulness with transformational management methods.
This, combined with her professional capacity to manage both the sensitivity and complexity
entailed in working with individuals and teams, set her and her curriculum apart. She is among
the few teachers in this field with the caliber of educational and professional experience
required to translate the now well-founded human potential sciences into mainstream business
practice.
Having trained as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher and as a Professor of Pediatrics
at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, in 2010 I began a national effort
to integrate mindfulness-based knowledge and information into children’s health and health
care. To this end, in 2011 I engaged Ms. Coman as a consultant to partner with me in
conducting an in depth appreciative inquiry assessment of interest and needs among the
professional community into which I was endeavoring to establish a “Mindfulness In Pediatrics”
program. In this capacity she offered a highly professional presence and developed and
implemented approaches, resources and materials to elicit the input of a range of national
colleagues. This work laid a foundation for subsequent national work in this area and was
reported to me as one of the best professional experiences of several who participated in our
interview process; one that facilitated rapid insight and clarity and a sense of resourcefulness to
make desired changes.

2. Ms. Coman is a rare and important professional and person during this time of increased need
to transform our workplaces to those that sustain and empower individuals and teams and the
communities and the organizations in which they work. It will be an honor and blessing for
anyone to work with her in any sincere effort to uncover and evolve the capacity to create and
contribute and succeed in work and life. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to
contact me at the e-mail and phone number noted below.
Christina Bethell, PhD, MBA, MPH
Professor, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health
Director, The Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative
cbethell@jhu.edu
971-404-7234