Peter earned his PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. An experienced educator, Peter has taught both Religious Studies and Composition & Rhetoric at UCSB and Ventura Community College. He manages the Buddhas in the West Material Archive, a digital public scholarship project that explores the dissemination of Buddhist material culture in the West (buddhasinthewest.com).

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A 2004 alumnus of the Woodenfish Program, Peter has contributed to the organization in various teaching capacities since 2005. Following two decades of dedication to the program’s mission, he stepped into the role of Program Director in 2025.

Angel joined the Woodenfish Buddhist Monastic Life Program in 2024 and Farming Zen in 2025 as a student, later returned to Woodenfish Program in 2025 as staff.

After first learning meditation in 2018, he began an intellectual and practical exploration of Buddhism, seeking to integrate monastic practices into everyday life. Angel is passionate about minimalism, mindful living, yoga, and physical activity. He majored in Philosophy and Spanish Literature at New College of Florida. Originally from El Salvador, he now lives in the United States and works as a high school teacher in Florida.

Vladka is an academic assistant who teaches Korean language, linguistics and popular culture. Alongside her academic career she translates Korean manhwa. In 2024, she took part in the Woodenfish Program in South Korea and returned in 2026 as staff for Farming Zen. She has been practicing meditation since 2017. She has knowledge of several world languages and Asian cultures. In her free time, she enjoys reading, gardening and traveling.

Lucy is currently enrolled at university and has interest in phenomenology. She is struck by how many of the concepts explored in her neuroscience coursework intellectually map onto insights long observed through direct introspection. Influenced also by physics, she is interested in how the nervous system gives rise to concepts such as directional time and a feeling of self identity, concepts also explored in Buddhist philosophy. 

Her interest in understanding the nature of experience led her to pursue meditation practice, including attending a Goenka Vipassana retreat. In 2025, she deepened this commitment by spending a month in residential practice with Woodenfish at Woljeongsa. Lucy uses meditation as a method for examining patterns within her own mind and is interested in how attending to Buddhist practice changes perceptions of what is real both permanently and during meditative states.

Zoltan first joined Woodenfish as a student of the Woodenfish Program in 2015 and returned as staff three more times since. Having visited China and India five times, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan once, he have a broad range of experiences when it comes to witnessing Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim culture and traditions firsthand. With a passion for travel and adventure, he settled down in Siem Reap, Cambodia where he found one of the most underrated and beautifully dhammic cultures. He has been been practicing Vipassana mediation since 2013 (over fifteen ten-day retreats and one twenty-day retreat so far under his belt) and he has been practicing yoga since 2014.

All staff have been students of the Woodenfish Program in the past.