Dr. Cathy-Mae Karelse (she/her) is a scholar-practitioner, changemaker and public speaker on issues of race, difference and belonging. She received a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2019. 

Cathy-Mae is trained in numerous transformation approaches with 20+ years of experience in deep systems change that addresses the underlying social norms and narratives that keep institutionalised discrimination in place. Her work addresses all landscapes: the inner, outer and in-between. Cathy-Mae is currently the DEI Lead at The Mindfulness Initiative and holds the position of Systems Change Lead at Resilience Capital Ventures. She works on policy and change programmes globally. 

Cathy-Mae is the author of the new book, Disrupting White Mindfulness: Race and Racism in the Wellbeing Industry,  published by Manchester University Press. The book reveals how an easy fit in Western society replicates existing social norms and dominant narratives creating an essentially White Mindfulness with largely White, middle-class audiences, teachers and decision-makers.

Engaging with decolonising initiatives rooted in embodied justice, Disrupting White Mindfulness offers a path and an invitation for a radically transformed world that moves away from whiteness to embrace solutions built on difference and on indigenous, queer, and global South perspectives. This emergent world faces the polycrisis using an intersectional lens to strengthen collaboration, community and belonging.