Michael Lerner, PhD

President, Commonweal; Co-founder CHE

Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principle work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program (since 1985), the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (since 2000), The New School (since 2007), Healing Circles (since 2014), and the Cancer Prevention Initiative (since 2014). He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is the author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press).

Born in 1943 in New York City,  Michael received a BA from Harvard University in 1965 and a PhD in political science from Yale University in 1971. He taught political science and psychology at Yale before moving to Bolinas in 1972. He co-founded Full Circle, a residential center for children with learning and behavior disorders in 1973. In 1976, he co-founded Commonweal.