Rev’d Professor Stephen G. Wright MSc RN RCNT RNT DipN DANS RPTT FRCN MBE is chairman and co-founder of the Foundation and an active participant in its work. He is the founding editor of the journal “Spirituality and Health International”, and is associate professor with the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the University of Cumbria, Carlisle and a Trustee of the Penny Brohn Cancer Care, and patron of the Manchester Area Bereavement Forum. He is an award-winning columnist for Nursing Standard and contributes regularly to other professional journals.

Stephen has a long history of leadership in nursing in the NHS and contributed to changes in clinical nursing and health care policy at national and international levels. His life took an about turn in the late 1980’s when he began exploring spirituality, influenced by a number of personal experiences and rooted in his work with people who were ill and suffering, and the struggles of those who care for them. His background led him to work in spiritual support of health care professionals but as the years went by he became more involved in helping people from all walks of life. He has written and published many scholarly papers, research reports, chapters, books (including two books exploring the nature of healing relationships - “Therapeutic Touch” and “Sacred Space – right relationship and spirituality in health care" with Jean Sayre-Adams), distance learning programmes and made numerous TV and radio appearances. His most recent books include the critically acclaimed “Reflections on spirituality and health”, and a general spiritual awakening guide called “Coming Home” due out in November 2007.  He works with a variety of organisations developing practices in spiritual care, conflict resolution and staff support, and with individuals seeking healing and spiritual direction. Like Jean he is a registered practitioner of TT. He is an ordained interfaith minister and spiritual counsellor and brings inclusiveness, a rich experience of many faiths and a loving approach to his work. He and Jean bring a wealth of wisdom and skill to the work of the Foundation and provide most of the support to those in retreat.

Jean Sayre-Adams RN MA RPTT came to the UK from the USA over 20 years ago and took a leading role in introducing Therapeutic Touch to British health care practitioners. Before leaving the USA she was at the cutting edge of health care, nursing patients in the earliest days of the unfolding AIDS crisis in an innovative complementary therapies unit at the University of California in San Francisco. Like Stephen, she has actively pursued her spiritual awakening and completed the Nine Gates programme in the USA, which has some similarities to the interfaith seminary where Stephen trained.

She and Stephen have also worked extensively with many world class spiritual teachers, and have sought to bring all these gifts into their everyday work and writings. Jean initiated the setting up of a charity in the UK which was to become the Sacred Space Foundation in the early 1990’s, and she has committed herself to it wholeheartedly ever since. She has been one if its guiding lights since its creation and she and Stephen have worked closely to nurture its development and expansion down the years, creating and holding an environment where people now from all walks of life and many different spiritual traditions, sometimes in great spiritual crisis, can seek help and guidance. She works as a spiritual director at the Foundation, helping to take care of the over 600 people a year who now seek spiritual nurturance in the safe sacred space it offers. She brings great love, wisdom and maturity to her work and has become an expert in the theory and practice of the Enneagram as a tool for spiritual development.