About
The work of Bearing Witness Design comes out of two different lives, both shaped by science, technology, and a restless curiosity, and both changed by contemplative practice.
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. They come from a willingness to actually understand what someone else is going through.
Joe has been a serial entrepreneur, a corporate executive, an inventor, and an academic. He brings more than two decades of experience in healthcare innovation, having worked with Fortune 100 companies, academic medical centers, and more than a dozen startups and nonprofits, leading strategic initiatives in 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 studied idealized design and systems thinking.
But credentials only tell part of the story.
What sets Joe apart is the combination of rigorous analytical thinking and a genuine grounding in contemplative practice. He can hold complexity without oversimplifying it, and he notices what others miss because he's willing to slow down and listen closely. His approach is shaped as much by that practice as it is by the boardroom and the research lab.
Joe works with a small number of organizations and leaders, usually innovators in healthcare and emerging markets who are building something genuinely new and know the conventional playbook won't get them there. He's less a traditional consultant and more a thought partner: someone who helps people see what they're building before it's fully formed, and who has both the perspective and the hands-on experience to help them build it.
To learn more about working with Joe directly, see his consulting work here.
Paul Gyodo Agostinelli, Sensei
Co-Founder, Bearing Witness Design
Paul Agostinelli brings intellectual rigor, contemplative depth, and real-world entrepreneurial experience to Bearing Witness Design. He holds a degree in Physics from Dartmouth College and a Master's in English from the University of Chicago, where he held a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities. For three decades, he's combined Zen practice with a career as a technology entrepreneur.
Since 2018, he's brought those two paths together, making Zen principles and practices accessible to modern professionals and organizations. He's led more than 300 lectures, workshops, and retreats applying Zen meditation and philosophy to work and life, with real, measurable results.
In 2022, as an advisor on a $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 organizational innovation. His work is also shaped by a longstanding interest in consciousness studies, the philosophy of AI, and the risks and possibilities of emerging technology.
Paul's presence in this work is a reminder that wisdom isn't a soft skill. It might be the hardest one to develop. Outside of Bearing Witness Design, Paul works as an executive coach, bringing Zen philosophy and koans into leadership and organizational life. You can learn more about that work at zenatwork.org.