Our Team

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Our Staff

William Peters, M.Ed., MFT, Founder and Executive Director

The Shared Crossing Project was founded by William Peters, a marriage and family therapist at the Family Therapy Institute of Santa Barbara. He directs the Shared Crossing Research Initiative (SCRI) and conducts workshops and presents nationally on SCRI’s research pertaining to end-of-life and afterlife phenomena. William’s work is informed by his service as a Zen Hospice volunteer at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, his two near death experiences and a variety of shared crossing experiences with family, friends, and clients. William worked as a teacher and social worker in Belize, Guatemala, and Peru. He maintains a psychotherapy practice specializing in end of life, bereavement and integration of profound psycho-spiritual experiences. 

William holds a Masters of Education in Group Dynamics from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a Master of Arts in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Economy of Industrial Societies from the University of California, Berkeley, CA. William is a Brian Weiss certified past life regression therapist 
Read William’s story here…

​​William Peters in the media:
  • Beyond Goodbye, a CNN report by John Blake, featuring accounts by William Peters and others about SDE's
Monica Williams, MD, Medical Director 
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​Monica Williams, MD, is a board-certified emergency physician who is on staff at one of the largest emergency departments in the nation, Huntsville Hospital, where she is also the Medical Director for Advanced Care Planning and End of Life Education Programs. She has served on the Board of Directors for two not-for-profit hospices and is an appointee to the American College of Emergency Physicians End of Life Taskforce.

Dr. Williams is faculty for the UAB's School of Medicine where she lectures on ethics and end-of-life decision-making. Additionally, she is an appointee to the Ethics Committee for Huntsville Hospital and also serves on staff with the Veterans Administration Long Beach Facility in California. 
Dr. Monica Williams is a passionate author, blogger and keynote speaker whose focus is empowering patients and families in critical and end-of-life decision-making. Her book, "It's OK to Die" and companion website are tools devoted to transforming the end of life into a time of peace, closure and healing. Dr. Monica has lectured from Princeton to LA and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Health Around the Web Column, and the Washington Post. She has appeared on the Emmy Award winning TV show, The Doctors, and her work has been adopted by the UK NHS campaign "Be Ready for It" and by UCLA's Center for Integrative Oncology. ​
Michael Kinsella, Ph.D., Chief Researcher 
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​Michael Kinsella, Ph.D. is a folklorist and Lecturer of Religion at Central Michigan University, where he teaches courses on death and dying, folk belief, and religious healing.  He is also the chief researcher for the Shared Crossing Testimonial Project, which focuses on the therapeutic potential of narratives recounting extraordinary end-of-life events.  

​Michael previously served as lead researcher for one of ten Science of Immortality Projects funded by the Immortality Project of the University of California, Riverside.  His most recent publications have appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. Michael is currently working on his second book, which explores the sociocultural influences of near-death and shared-death experiences.
Kattie Bachar, MA, AMFT 
Administrator 
Noël Christensen
Staff Researcher
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