Elizabeth Anne Hin

Elizabeth Anne Hin, founding President of The White Rose Foundation, was born in the Finger Lakes area of western New York State in 1953. Beth received a BA in religious studies from Smith College in 1976. While in college and directly after, Beth lived and worked in Alaska among the Kutchin and Tanana Athabaskan people, the Southern Y’upik Eskimo and the Aleut. There she was educated by medicine elders of the Kutchin and the Y’upik and adopted by the late Grandmother Martha Neck. She was ordained a nondenominational minister through the mentoring of the Rt. Rev. Menuard Slusher in 1981.

Beth accomplished masters candidacy in Asian Studies at San Diego State University as a California Fellow under the sage, Huston Smith, and in Religion on a doctoral research and teaching fellowship at the University of Iowa.

Beth has studied the world’s religions, cultures, people and places for four decades. Early in her adult life, she served Laotian refugees in 1979 under the aegis of the International Rescue Committee at the Nong Khai Refugee Camp Hospital on the Mekong River in Northern Thailand. More recently, she journeyed to Egypt, Greece, and Turkey following 9/11; to Myanmar in support of the living saint, Daw Aung Sun Su Kyi; to Europe following the Madrid bombings of 2004, central Eastern Africa in 2005 and France, 2006.

From a devout Roman Catholic upbringing to spiritual adoption by Iroquois clan grandmother Twylah Nitsch at Nitsch’s request, to deep mentoring by the late Thomas Banyakya, Dan Evahama, Jo Jay Suazo and indigenous sages of several nations, her contemplative nature called her to establish with friends The White Rose Foundation in November of 1995.

Since the foundation’s inception, and under its auspices, Beth and many friends have participated in the:

• United Nations Fourth World Conference on the Status of Women in Beijing, China
• Sri Aurobindo Association’s Cellular Evolution Conferences in San Francisco, California and Pondicherry, India
• International Conference on the Sacred Feminine in Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Sri Aurobindo 125th Anniversary Commemorative Conference in Phoenicia, New York
• Unity in Yoga for Peace Conference in Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine
• One Hundred Years of Yoga in America Conference in the Catskills, Pennsylvania
• Parliament of the World’s Religions in Capetown, South Africa

Under the auspices of the White Rose Foundation, Beth has been a keynote speaker at The Gathering of Circles, Cloudcroft, New Mexico, for their seventh and tenth years; the Annual Transformation and Healing Conference at Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she developed and taught classes in world religions and consciousness for seven years; the Annual Transpersonal Psychologists’ Conference, Saint Petersburg, Russia; the University of Kazan, Russia; and the Village of Glastonbury, England; as well as numerous conferences, classes, and evenings at the invitation of American universities, secondary schools, churches, and spiritual organizations.

Pursuing foundation projects in education, Beth and friends have journeyed to forty-three nations on all continents except Antarctica. They have delivered medications to Sub-Sarahan Africa, South America, Asia, and delivered food, clothing, and medical care to Native American medicine women, men and elders. They have served elders of Southern Africa; Buddhist monks of all existing major monasteries and the sole major convent of Tibet, China; and several of the renowned Buddhist schools of Myanmar. They have provided nonpolitical and nonreligious educational supplies and support to rural children of Africa, Australia, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, and Russia. The foundation has also respectfully presented sacred gifts—such as a Torah, a Peace Pipe, a Patten and Chalice, and other religious ceremonial articles and garb—to spiritual leaders, both humble and famed, of many of the world's faiths.

The White Rose Foundation has also sponsored scholarships for young adults to attend international and national retreats, and non-foundation conferences, summer camps and projects, scholarships for some Foundation classes. The foundation has also provided occasional honoraria for spiritual leaders from several continents in support of their educational work or their attendance at events significant to their faith and path.

Beth's life is dedicated to a profound embrace of humanity and the cosmos in an abiding love for the Divine. In the words of Sri Sarada Devi Bengal, India, 1853–1920: "My child if you want peace, do not look into anybody's faults, look into your own faults. Learn to make the world your own. No one is a stranger. The whole world is your own."