Colorado Chapter
Mary Pougiales
Co-Chairs
Mary is a Colorado transplant from the San Francisco Bay Area following her retirement from a 4o+-year career there in criminal law. She is a member of the California and New Mexico Bars.
She spent the first seven years of her career as a state prosecutor in the Marin County DA’s Office, including work on the Trailside Killer team. She then joined the OCDETF unit of the San Francisco U.S. Attorney’s Office as an AUSA supervising long-term multi-agency investigations and prosecutions of international drug trafficking organizations for the next 14 years. She devoted her last 20 years to criminal defense appellate work for the Ninth Circuit CJA and for several California State Appellate Districts.
She began exploring meditation practices about 40 years ago as early burnout began settling in. First yoga and Indian traditions, then Soto Zen at the Berkeley Zen Center, finally Vipassana (Insight Meditation) after Jack Kornfield opened Spirit Rock Meditation Center near her home in Marin County. That has been her Mindfulness (and sanity) home ever since.
She is now a graduate of the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, a 2-year intensive training developed and taught by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, leading to certification by the UC-Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. She joins MILS with a committed to helping grow a community of awakened trial lawyers, trial lawyers who are open to explording mindfulness as a means to become more engaged, ethical, powerful, and effective in their practice and their lives and relationships as a whole.
David Graf has practiced law in Colorado since 1995. For most of those years, he has operated his own firm as a specialist in community association law. David is one of the most sought-after community association industry trainers and speakers in the United States. David is a Connecticut native who moved to Colorado in 1995 to find the mythical state of balance between working in the city as an attorney and playing in the mountains as a rock and ice climber, skier, and mountain runner. David has been practicing yoga since 1995 and meditating consistently since the year 2000.
In 2013, David suffered a stroke after tearing his vertebral artery in a freak accident. After re-learning to walk, dress, and feed himself, he commuted to work and to client meetings on a folding bicycle until he was able to drive again, nearly a year after his stroke. David speaks on mental toughness during long-term rehabilitation, living with chronic pain, mindfulness and meditation, conflict reduction, and professional burnout and happiness. David is also a life and mindset coach who works with attorneys to help them live their best lives during difficult circumstances. He is a double-certified professional coach and holds the Energy Leadership Index-Master Practitioner designation.