About TM Women Professionals
A Global Organization
In 2008, we were inspired to create an initiative dedicated to informing women and girls worldwide about the most relevant benefits to them of the Transcendental Meditation program. This initiative forms the basis of the women’s wing of the global Transcendental Meditation program.
While the TM program provides a universal technique for unfolding the full, creative potential of every individual and is taught in the same systematic way to women and men, TM Women Professionals addresses the unique interests of women. This is an exciting time of expansion for our organization, currently offering TM outreach to women and girls in over 60 countries.
National Executive Director
Janet Hoffman
Ms. Hoffman has 40 years experience working on the international, national, regional, and local levels of the Transcendental Meditation program in leadership, organizational, creative development, and teaching positions. With offices in the heart of the historic financial district of New York City, Ms. Hoffman is currently nationwide Director of the TM program for women professionals. She is also the Director for the TM program in Education for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York State. Ms. Hoffman has appeared on both television and radio and introduced the TM program in business, government, educational institutions, and to the public. She learned the TM technique in 1968.
Advisory Board
Donna Brooks
Ms. Brooks spent thirty years in the field of book publishing, starting out at Crown Books for Young Readers and ending as Editorial Director at Dutton Children’s Books, an imprint of the Penguin Group. She helped to establish the careers of many top award-winning writers and illustrators and published a number of books that became international best-sellers, with sales of over a million copies. During her career, Ms. Brooks saw sweeping changes transform her industry from a field of numerous independently-owned publishers and booksellers to a small group of agglomerated, corporatized, multi-national behemoths. She credits her Transcendental Meditation practice for her ability to navigate those changes successfully, and for the intuition, insight, and flexibility that allowed her to recognize and work with highly talented people. Ms. Brooks now co-directs the TM program for women in New York. She learned the TM technique in 1973.
Sarina Grosswald, Ed.D.
Dr. Grosswald is an expert in cognitive learning; president of SJ Grosswald & Associates, a consulting firm in medical education in Alexandria, Virginia; and director of continuing medical education for the American Medical Women’s Association. She is also project director for a research study on the Transcendental Meditation program and ADHD in Maryland. Dr. Grosswald learned the TM technique in 1970.
Debra Saunders
Debra Saunders is Vice President, Municipal Underwriting, at Fidelity Capital Markets. Previously, Ms. Saunders was Managing Director and head of Ambac’s Public Finance West Region which included all states west of the Mississippi, Guam and Puerto Rico. Ambac Financial Group, Inc., headquartered in New York City, is a holding company whose affiliates provide financial services to clients in both the public and private sectors around the world. Ms. Saunders’ past experience includes Vice President at the Industrial Bank of Japan, responsible for origination, analysis, and negotiation of liquidity facilities and bank letters of credit; Chief Budget Analyst for the New York City Comptroller’s office, responsible for the quarterly reporting on the City’s budget; former adjunct lecturer of governmental accounting at the Wagner School. She learned the TM technique in 1998.
Anita Day Warner
Ms. Warner retired from her position of Vice President of Institutional Fixed Income Sales/Finance at Kidder Peabody in 1994. One of the few women working as a finance professional in the 1970′s, she started at Merrill Lynch in San Francisco as an assistant in commodities. She moved to Kidder Peabody in Philadelphia and then New York City, working in sales with institutional investors in the bond area. Ms.Warner found that her Transcendental Meditation practice enabled her to remain calm and clear- headed in the midst of the highly pressured working environment of an extremely busy trading floor. After the end of a very successful career spanning almost twenty years, Ms. Warner was asked to manage the training program for Kidder’s Institutional Fixed Income Sales and Trading Departments, where she mentored recent graduates who were entering the field of finance. She learned the TM technique in 1971.