Florence serves as a Global Ambassador to the Global Mindfulness Collaborative, a network of MBSR teacher training institutes, world wide. She works to develop and promote the access and potential for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) to foster public health and well-being globally. Florence trains MBSR teachers at all levels of development as well as training MBSR teacher trainers. With equal focus on the refinement of teaching skills, attitudes and knowledge, she develops cultivation of the deepest understanding of MBSR as a path of love, healing and transformation. She is a leading contributor to the development of the MBSR curriculum, teacher training programs, materials and best practices for teacher training in the growing field of MBSR and MBPs.

Previous to coming to Brown, she was, for seventeen years, the Director of Oasis Institute for Professional Education and Training at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts’ Medical School where she supported the development of thousands of MBSR teachers globally with rigor, depth and cultural sensitivity. 

Florence trained directly with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD and Saki Santorelli, MA, EdD. and for more than four decades has taught mindfulness and meditation to adults, youth, clinical populations, and professionals in the fields of education, medicine, psychology, and business. A student of wisdom traditions for more than 40 years she is a student in the Siddha Yoga tradition, a practitioner of Insight meditation for 25 years, and a senior Insight Dialogue teacher. She offers mindfulness meditation retreats, Insight Dialogue retreats and Interpersonal Mindfulness Program teacher trainings. She is a licensed family therapist, and holds degrees in education and psychology. 

Publications include “MBSR Workbook for Anxiety” with Stahl, B., and Koerbel, L., New Harbinger press. Chapters include “Mindfulness and the Therapeutic Relationship,” with Gregory Kramer, PhD, Hick, S. & Bien, T. eds. Guilford Press; and, “Resources for Teaching Mindfulness,” McCown, D. & Reibel, D. eds. Springer. She co-authored a preventive medicine report “Integrating Mindfulness Training in School Health Education to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Adolescents:  Feasibility and Preliminary Report" with Elena Salmoirago-Blotcher, MD, PhD. Media include a Professional Formation module, Drexel College of Medicine; dvd, “Living Awake, Mindfulness for Young Adults”; and the self-study program, MBSR On-line through Sounds True.