About
The work of Bearing Witness Design emerges from two distinct but deeply complementary lives — both shaped by science, technology, and a restless intellectual curiosity, and both transformed by the practice of going deeper.
Joe Powers, PhD, MBA
Founder & Principal, Bearing Witness Design
Joe Powers has spent his career at the intersection of human suffering and human ingenuity — driven by a belief that the most transformative solutions don't come from analysis alone, but from a willingness to truly inhabit another's experience.
A serial entrepreneur, former corporate executive, inventor, and academic, Joe brings more than two decades of deep expertise in healthcare innovation. He has worked alongside Fortune 100 companies, elite academic medical centers, and more than a dozen startups and nonprofits — leading strategic initiatives that span digital therapeutics, artificial intelligence, and extended reality applications in health. He holds a PhD in Exercise Psychology, and three Master's degrees including one in Organizational Dynamics, where he developed expertise in idealized design and systems thinking.
But credentials only tell part of the story.
What sets Joe apart is a rare combination of rigorous analytical thinking and genuine spiritual depth — a capacity to hold complexity without reducing it, and to see what others miss precisely because he is willing to slow down and listen at a different level. His approach draws as much from Zen philosophy and contemplative practice as it does from the boardroom and the research lab. He moves between those worlds not as a translator, but as someone who is equally at home in each.
Joe works with a small number of organizations and leaders — typically innovators in healthcare and emerging markets who are trying to bring something genuinely new into the world, and who sense that the conventional playbook won't get them there. He is not a traditional consultant. He is something closer to a thought partner and visionary guide — someone who helps others see what they are building before it is fully formed, and who brings both the wisdom and the practical experience to help them bring it to life.
For those interested in working with Joe directly, you can learn more about his consulting work here.
Paul Gyodo Agostinelli, Sensei
Co-Founder, Bearing Witness Design
Paul Agostinelli brings an uncommon combination of intellectual rigor, contemplative depth, and real-world entrepreneurial experience to the work of Bearing Witness Design. Holding a degree in Physics from Dartmouth College and a Master's in English from the University of Chicago — supported by a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities — Paul has spent three decades weaving Zen practice into a long career as a technology entrepreneur.
Since 2018, he has integrated those two paths into a unified offering: accessible Zen principles and practices designed for modern professionals and organizations. He has conducted over 300 lectures, workshops, and retreats applying Zen meditation and philosophy to work and life — not as an abstract exercise, but as a lived practice with measurable impact.
In 2022, as an expert advisor on a landmark $100 million corporate innovation initiative, Sensei Agostinelli co-developed the first Bearing Witness Design curriculum — bringing the principle of "Not Knowing" and the practice of experiential empathy into the heart of organizational innovation. His work is further informed by a deep interest in consciousness studies, the philosophy of AI, and the promise and perils of emerging technology.
Paul's presence in this work is a reminder that wisdom is not a soft skill. It is, in fact, the hardest and most essential one. Beyond Bearing Witness Design, Paul continues his practice as an executive coach — weaving Zen philosophy and life koans into the fabric of leadership and organizational life. You can explore that work at zenatwork.org.