Highlights: Vipassana meditation has played a central role in Charlotte's development and education. After being medically retired from the Stanford Volleyball Team, it served as an avenue to greater acceptance, happiness, resilience, and health. Charlotte's interest in the practice brought her to the Stanford-based neuroscience group CCARE (the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education). There she worked for the Director of Education on projects that secularized traditional Buddhist meditation practices for the purpose of teaching them in classrooms and to healthcare professionals. She changed her major to contemplative neuroscience--a combination of neuroscience and Buddhist studies--with the support of a growing community of academics in contemplative studies from Stanford and Brown University, and University of Wisconsin.