Trustee History

Fetzer Institute President Emeritus Rob Lehman chaired Fetzer’s board for 17 years and served as president from 1989 to 2000. Under his leadership as president, the Institute contributed to the development and mainstreaming of the fields of mind-body-spirit health, social and emotional learning, contemplative practice, and scientific research on love and forgiveness. On his work with private foundations for 50 years, Rob says, “It is a rare privilege to be part of organizations that are serving a larger cultural story of hope unfolding in the world.”

A professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, Bruce Carlson served as chair of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology in the Medical School and was also director of the Institute of Gerontology. Bruce helped shape much of the Institute's work in science, chaired numerous committees and served on the Fetzer Institute Memorial Trust. Having been associated with the Fetzer Institute for more than 30 years, he believes that foundations play an important generative role in tackling some of the most important issues facing humankind.

Frances Vaughan, PhD (1935 – 2017), was a pioneer in transpersonal psychology and studied several spiritual traditions. Her books include Shadows of the Sacred, The Inward Arc, Awakening Intuition, and Paths Beyond Ego. She served on the clinical faculty at the University of California Medical School at Irvine and was on the faculty of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology and the Association for Humanistic Psychology. She was a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Frances also served on the Fetzer Memorial Trust.

Angie Arrien (1940 – 2014) was a cultural anthropologist, educator, author, lecturer, and consultant. In her service as a Fetzer Institute trustee, she brought an orientation to “the fourfold way.” As she described in her TED Talk, these are the four great mysteries that every culture ritualizes: birth, initiatory processes, committed love, and death (the search, the struggle, the breakthrough, the return). Her books, including The Four-Fold Way and the award-winning Signs of Life and The Second Half of Life, have been translated into 13 languages.

President of Claflin & Associates, a counseling and consulting firm, Janis is a psychotherapist in private practice and a management consultant. She is a specialist in conflict resolution, organizational effectiveness, team building, managing change, leadership, and organizational development, skills she brought to Fetzer in her board service and her role as its first-ever board chair. Janis helped shape many of the relationship-centered aspects of Fetzer’s work, from relationship-centered care to teacher formation. She holds a Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School.  

Bruce Fetzer served John Fetzer in various capacities regarding his great uncle’s radio, television, and cable networks, including the development of Pro Am Sports System (PASS). Bruce held financial and program assignments at the Fetzer Institute and has since developed businesses in real estate, consulting, and trust management. As a Fetzer trustee, Bruce served as treasurer, was a champion of the Institute’s science programs, and carefully nurtured the notion of life’s journey and wonder that his great uncle urged all to tend. Bruce also served on the Fetzer Memorial Trust.

Larry Sullivan, PhD, served as a Fetzer trustee. He also worked as a professor of theology at Notre Dame University and as director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. His book, Icanchu’s Drum, received best book awards from the Association of American Publishers and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the associate editor of the 16-volume Encyclopedia of Religion, which received the Hawkins Prize and Dartmouth Medal from the American Library Association for the best work in any publishing category. The Religions of Humanity book series, which he wrote with Julien Reis, received the 2000 Hans Christian Andersen Prize for the best series in children’s literature. 

Jeremy Waletzky, MD, is a psychiatrist specializing in treating patients with mood disorders. He was a clinical professor of psychiatry at The George Washington University, where he taught psychiatric residents psychopharmacology, cognitive therapy, and family therapy. He received his MD from the College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University, and is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Jeremy also served on the Fetzer Memorial Trust.

Winston “Wink” Franklin (1941 – 2004) was president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, founded by astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, a member of the Apollo 14 mission. Wink was a pioneer in the study of human consciousness and mind-body health. He brought his experience in public service, foundation management, governmental and nonprofit research organizations, and as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist to his board service at Fetzer. Early in his career, he was vice president of the Charles Kettering Foundation and led programs designed to encourage interracial dialogue. Wink was executive producer for several television and radio documentaries featuring healing capacities of the connection between the mind and body.

Judith Skutch Whitson (1931 – 2021) was co-founder and president of the Foundation for Inner Peace, publisher of A Course in Miracles, and an internationally known lecturer who appeared on numerous radio and television programs. In 1972, Judy met astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, and he asked her to serve on the then-nascent Institute for Noetic Sciences board. Through her friendship with John E. Fetzer, she was a founding board member of the Fetzer Institute. With her daughter Tamara, she co-authored Double Vision, a book about their relationship with each other and their spiritual journey.

Robert Jahn (1930 – 2017) was a pioneer of deep space propulsion and mind-machine interactions. A plasma physicist, Bob was a professor of Aerospace Science and Dean of Engineering at Princeton University, where he founded the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab, a parapsychology research program that ran from 1979 to 2007. During his career, he worked on electrically powered spacecraft propulsion and directed several major research programs in advanced aerospace propulsion systems in cooperation with NASA and the US Air Force.

Canadian oil and mineral businessman Maurice Strong (1929 – 2015) was also a diplomat who served as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was the founding Executive Director of the UN Environment Program and played a key role in organizing the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. He held longstanding ties with various development, environmental, and humanitarian organizations. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London, and the Royal Society of Canada.

Orest Bedrij (1933 – 2022) was a Ukrainian physicist and investment banker. As IBM's technical director at age 29, he was responsible for developing, programming, and integrating the computers for the first soft landing on the moon at the Space Flight Operations facility in Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, NASA. He served as a Fetzer trustee and treasurer and was a member of the American Institute of Physics, Shevchenko Science Society, and the New York Academy of Arts and Sciences.