URBAN ZEN FOUNDER DONNA KARAN HONORED AT PARSONS 2012 FASHION BENEFIT

We are always excited to share the events filling our calendars and the happenings that keep us energized. Last night was a particularly notable evening for the Urban Zen family as our founder, Donna Karan, was honored at the Parsons The New School for Design Fashion Benefit. Donna was honored with entrepreneur, philanthropist and Urban Zen supporter Sheila C. Johnson (read about Sheila’s trip to Haiti with Donna here).

The Fashion Benefit, now in its 64th year, raised nearly $1.4 million for scholarships and programs at Parsons – which is not only very promising news for budding young designers everwhere, but also makes an important statement on how creativity, beauty and artistic expression remain valued in our culture.

While at the Benefit, Donna expressed her gratitude for beginning her journey at Parsons saying, “Parsons gave me my start in the industry, and to be able to support future designers is incredibly important to me. I am particularly excited to be honored with Sheila, who has been so instrumental to the success of Parsons, as well as to celebrate the first graduating class of the new MFA in Fashion Design and Society.”

We are thrilled to see creativity being celebrated and to see our founder honored for her iconic, inspiring work within the design community!

Supporting our May Ambassador: No Mother’s Day Campaign

This month we are proud to partner with our Ambassador, Christy Turlington Burns, to help raise awareness and inspire change for all mothers everywhere. This Mother’s Day, we invite you to align with Christy and her foundation, Every Mother Counts, as they launch a social issue campaign designed to raise awareness about the hundreds of thousands of girls and women around the world who die each year from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. This campaign is a collaboration between CHI & Partners and Every Mother Counts.

The cornerstone of the campaign is a short social issue film that features moms encouraging other moms to join in solidarity by disappearing May 13th, Mother’s Day, because “our silence can speak the loudest for all mothers.” Click here to watch the video.

Their goal is to leverage Mother’s Day—the day when people are thinking about their mothers most—as a moment to bring the facts about maternal mortality to a wider audience. Christy and her team believe that once people know the facts, they will want to do what they can to engage. Their hope is that the No Mothers Day campaign will spark energy into Every Mother Counts’ overarching goal of driving 5 million individual actions on maternal health by 2015.

How You Can Help:

Supporting Father Rick at NPH Saint Damien’s Hospital, Haiti

by Janera Soerel

Father Rick. He is American—from Connecticut, in his 50s, tall, fit, and very handsome, with neatly trimmed hair. Wearing khaki pants, sneakers, a snugly fitting t-shirt with a leather string tied around his neck, from which a wooden cross dangled, he was polite when we were introduced, but his eyes darted away as we shook hands. He was a busy man.

A medical doctor as well as a priest, Father Rick’s career as a humanitarian has taken him to Mexico and Honduras. He has been in Haiti for the past 25 years, working for Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH), an international Christian mission that shelters orphaned, abandoned, and other at-risk children.

The Urban Zen Integrative Therapy (UZIT) Program is supporting the efforts of Father Rick at NPH Saint Damien’s Hospital, a pediatric facility that treats its young patients without compensation. Teams of UZIT-trained integrative therapists have been traveling to Haiti to provide doctors, nurses, staff and relief workers as well as pediatric patients.

BrainWave Twitter Party with Marilu Henner

What is your most potent memory?

Join us for a live Twitter conversation with Marilu Henner, keynote speaker in the Rubin Museum’s BrainWave Series. We will be live tweeting about the magic of memory, a concept that Marilu is exceedingly familiar with as she is someone with Superior Autobiographical Memory – an uncanny ability to recall details of every day of her life – a talent known to be shared by only six other people in the world.

Our conversation is also a celebration of Marilu’s latest book, Total Memory Makeover: Uncover Your Past, Take Charge of Your Future, which depicts her personal insights and experiences as to how having a reliable memory has helped her in countless scenarios. She also gives readers advice in making memory work for them, from having the right attitude about life and developing a healthy mindset about the past, to building a personal history “track” and using it to actually change your life.

This is an exciting opportunity for you to leverage the Twittersphere while you ponder the following questions:

1. Does an infallible memory help you make better decisions?
2. What types of memories are most valuable to you?
3. What does it feels like to recall an old memory.

IMPORTANT HASHTAGS & HANDLES:

#uzfevent

@urban_zen

@TheRealMarilu
@rubinmuseum

Celebrating Well-Being & Education with Goldie Hawn & Dr. Oz

Attending the Turnaround For Children Third Annual Impact Awards Dinner and the HealthCorps’ 6th Annual Gala in the same evening perfectly exemplified why I am such a big believer in the power of like-minds coming together.

I was honored to support two of my dear friends and inspirations – Goldie Hawn and Dr. Mehmet Oz at their respective events. The Impact Awards honored Goldie and The Hawn Foundation for her innovative work empowering children through her mind/body/spirit approach to education (something I am whole-heartedly in support of). And, I always love catching up with Mehmet and celebrating the ways in which he is bringing integrative well-being to the forefront of the public radar. The HealthCorps’ Gala was an extraordinary event that truly showcased the champions of forward-thinking healthcare.

The evening served a powerful reminder of why I care so deeply about the mission of Urban Zen and why creating a community of inspired change-makers can make all of the difference. I have such gratitude for this community that I am so blessed to be a part of.