Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, author, and social activist. She received a BA from Tulane University in 1964 and a Ph.D in medical anthropology in 1973 from Union Graduate School. Her academic teaching credentials include being on the faculty of Columbia University (1964-1968), the University of Miami School of Medicine(1970-1972), the New School for Social Research (1976-1979), and the Naropa Institute, among others.

Roshi Joan is a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order. Her work has focused on engaged Buddhism for more than three decades. She is founder and director of the Upaya Prison Project, which develops programs on meditation for prisoners, and she is founder of the Ojai Foundation. She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman.

Her various academic honors include a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology (1972), appointment as an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University's Peabody Museum (1981), Rockefeller Chair at California Institute of Integral Studies (1993-1996) and the Harold C. Wit Chair at Harvard Divinity School (1996). Roshi Joan has worked in the area of death and dying for over 30 years and is director of the Project on Being with Dying.

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