Ann Phillips Seide is a practicing internal medicine physician at Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks, California, with a specialty Integrative Medicine. She has co-led council training workshops in Auschwitz, Rwanda, Santa Fe, Ojai, Chicago, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Salinas Valley State Prison, and Greyston Foundation, in Yonkers, NY. Ann has facilitated council circles at Zen Peacemaker Bearing Witness Retreats in Poland and Bosnia, as well as in her own family and with groups of nurses, military veterans and incarcerated people. Ann obtained her MD from Loyola University Chicago, then went into the US Navy for residency in internal medicine at Portsmouth Naval Hospital. She subsequently served as an internist in Charleston, SC, where she was an initial innovator in the field of Hospitalist medicine; she was honorably discharged as Lieutenant Commander just prior to 9/11. A life-long learner and lover of “important talk,” as her father called it, in recent years Ann has pursued her interest in palliative and end-of-life care by seeking out further training at Upaya in its chaplaincy program, Being with Dying program, and GRACE trainings. In her medical practice she is committed to finding ways in which council practice can address the syndromes of burn-out and isolation felt so deeply throughout the healthcare system. Ann is a Fellow of The University of Arizona Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, a member of Zen Center of Los Angeles, a steward of the Zen Peacemaker Order and an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at California Lutheran University, where she teaches a course on The Medical Ethics of Living and Dying. She is the mother of three budding young adults, who also finds time to enjoy the practice of yoga and the garden she created with her husband Jared.