Our Team

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Our Staff

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

William Peters, M.A., M.Ed., is the Founder of the Shared Crossing Project whose mission is to raise awareness and educate people about the profound and healing experiences that are possible for the dying and their loved ones.

As the Director of the  Shared Crossing Research Initiative (SCRI), William and his team collect and study extraordinary end-of-life experiences (shared crossings) and are recognized as the world’s leading authority on the shared-death experience. He has developed methods to facilitate these shared crossings and to assist experiencers in meaningfully integrating their experiences. William conducts workshops and presents nationally on his research. He is a licensed psychotherapist at the Family Therapy Institute in Santa Barbara where he specializes in end-of-life counseling as a means toward psycho-spiritual evolution. William has served as a Zen Hospice volunteer and his work is informed by his two near-death experiences and a variety of shared-death experiences. William’s book, written with Dr. Michael Kinsella, is titled Halfway to Heaven: Inside the Shared Crossing Experience, and will be published by Simon & Schuster for worldwide release in January 2022. 

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. specializes in stories, beliefs, and practices surrounding exceptional experiences. His research interests include the therapeutic potential of end-of-life experience narratives.  Michael has given talks at conferences held by the American Anthropological Association, the American Folklore Society, the American Academy of Religion, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the International Association for Near-Death Studies, among many others. 
 
​Michael previously served as the lead researcher for one of ten Science of Immortality Projects funded by the Immortality Project of the University of California, Riverside.  His work has been published by the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, ABC-CLIO, Routledge, and the University Press of Mississippi.  Recently, Michael was featured on the History Channel’s The UnXplained.
Kattie Bachar, MA, AMFT 
Director of Operations
Noël Christensen
Staff Researcher
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