Patrick Linton, Executive Director

Pat joins the Vipassana Hawaii team as its full-time Executive Director after serving many years in senior executive positions in the non-profit fields of hospital administration and community health improvement, including the past sixteen years on the Island of Hawaii. He received his bachelor of business administration from the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh and his master of hospital administration from the University of Minnesota in the 1970's. Following graduation, he held senior administrative positions in hospitals in Buffalo, Minnesota and Pueblo, Colorado.

Four years later he was selected as the President and CEO of the Berlin Hospital Association in Berlin, Wisconsin at the age of 31. Seeking more challenge, he became the CEO of Yavapai Regional Medical Center in Prescott, Arizona in 1988 leading what eventually became a very successful and national award winning turnaround effort. It was during this time that Pat was able to finally bring together his two passions of spirituality and hospital administration blending them into what was then a very progressive model of organizational development called "Creating a Total Healing Environment."

In 1992 Pat was called to leave his work in Arizona and come to the Island of Hawaii to lead the development of the new North Hawaii Community Hospital in Waimea. Working with only two other employees in a one-room office, Pat worked closely with the Board of Directors, staff, volunteers and community to design, finance, construct and open one of the most beautiful and integrated healing hospitals in the country in 1996 which has subsequently been visited and studied by thousands of health care professionals from around the world. Although it was time to step down and turn over the reins of NHCH to his successor in 1997, he was asked to stay in the North Hawaii region of the island which had now become his home.

After working for four years for the Earl and Doris Bakken Foundation on various community health improvement projects, he was asked by its Board of Directors to become the Executive Director of Five Mountains Hawaii in 2001, a position he held for the next five years. This unique, small non-profit organization administratively facilitated and supported a number of innovative, community health improvement priority projects on the island in such areas as reducing substance abuse, increasing positive youth activities, decreasing domestic violence, reducing obesity and weight-related chronic illness, and increasing health and wellness tourism to the island.

In the summer of 2006, Pat decided to pursue a dream to take a year to live and travel abroad. He spent most of this time living and traveling around Southern India to deepen in his spiritual practice of Kriya Yoga, an integral form of yoga founded on the teachings of its Satguru Babaji Nagaraj that includes physical postures, pranayama breathing, meditation, mantras, and the all important aspect of actively living the yoga in the world every day. Pat is also highly devoted to serving the Divine Mother in all Her aspects and work in the world, and Mother Meera in particular with whom he has done darshan many times.

Pat returned to Hawaii in the summer of 2007 when he was asked to assume the Interim Executive Director position of the World Healing Institute, a non-profit organization he helped to form in 2002 with its Founder and President. Now that he has accepted our offer to be the Executive Director of Vipassana Hawaii, Pat will resume his volunteer position as a member of the Board of Directors of WHI.

Over his career, Pat has served voluntarily on numerous boards, councils and committees of government agencies, professional associations and community non-profit organizations. Often he has held the chair position on these groups. He continues to volunteer his time where he is needed and can make a difference. And in an increasingly resource challenged world, he has taken a particular interest in the rapidly emerging areas of sustainability, re-localization and turning once again towards earth community. Our project to develop the Hawaii Insight Meditation Center offers him a wonderful opportunity to learn and lead in these areas of interest.

Pat is married and has two grown daughters, one in Hawaii and one back in his old home state of Wisconsin. But he's not a grandpa quiet yet.