Jared Seide is the founder and Executive Director of Beyond Us & Them, a nonprofit organization that offers a vision for a culture of social connection, engagement and resilience that promotes mutual respect, wellbeing and care and dismantles systems of oppression, exclusion and racism. Beyond Us & Them promotes structures of belonging, utilizing council and other practices to encourage social connection and wellbeing for system-impacted and other populations. The organization is an outgrowth of Center for Council, which Jared also founded.

Jared is author of the book, “Where Compassion Begins: Foundational Practices to Enhance Mindfulness, Attention and Listening from the Heart” and editor of “Leaving Prison Behind: A Council Before I Go.” He has worked extensively with schools, businesses, healthcare organizations, elder care facilities, prisons, community based organizations and law enforcement agencies to build council-based resources and to help these groups thrive and grow. He has developed and shepherded training programs to promote health, relationality and compassion and reduce burn-out amongst police and correctional officers, physicians, nurses and other first responders. He has created award-winning insight and accountability-oriented rehabilitation programs for incarcerated populations and a reentry program to support and resource formerly incarcerated individuals, as well as programs that build positive organizational culture within public and private companies.

Jared has led workshops, trainings and retreats focusing on compassion, reconciliation and community-building throughout the U.S., as well as in Poland, Rwanda, France, Ireland, Colombia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and has been a Resident Fellow and Convening Host at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. He has been featured in numerous interviews, articles and podcasts and is a frequent presenter at conferences and seminars, speaking on the integration of council into varied arenas. Jared has served as a member of the US Department of Justice National Officer Safety and Wellness Workgroup and the 720 Health Council of Advisors. Jared received the Foundation for Social Connection’s 2023 Marcia Slater Johnston Award for Outstanding Leadership in Community-Based Efforts to Reduce Social Isolation and Loneliness. Jared is an alumnus of Brown University and the Upaya Institute Chaplaincy Program.