Project Directors

The California Central Coast Center project is managed by Bart Mendel and Suzan Garner, long-time Buddhist practitioners and owners of Stonemark Construction Management. They were devoted students of the late 16th Gyalwa Karmapa and the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and are close students of the 14th Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche and the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa Thaye Dorje.

Bart has taught Buddhism for over 30 years at various Dharma centers throughout the US, Canada and Europe. Suzan lived in Nepal and India for two years in the late 1980s where she established long-term relationships with a number of the highest Tibetan Buddhist masters of today. At the request of Shamar Rinpoche in 1997, they moved to Santa Barbara with their two sons and founded the first Bodhi Path Karma Kagyu Buddhist Center in California where Bart has taught for the past 11 years.

Bart Mendel is President/CEO of Stonemark Construction Management, a full-service firm that specializes in planning and management of design and construction activities. Bart has 30 years of experience in all aspects of construction and project management and has managed a wide variety of projects up to $35 million in value across the US and Canada. He presently serves as the project manager for Mahamudra Hermitage, a retreat center in upstate New York founded by Trungram Gyaltrul Rinpoche. Bart is a licensed General Contractor, ICBO Certified Building Inspector and is LEED Accredited in the design and construction of Green buildings.

In 1984 Suzan Garner founded and served as President/CEO of Clonetics Corporation, a privately-held biotechnology company. Clonetics earned a reputation as the world’s leading supplier of normal human cell systems and was acquired by BioWhittaker Inc., a publicly-held company in 1996. For the past 10 years Suzan has volunteered her services on behalf of various Dharma projects and currently serves as the President/CEO of Siddhartha Foundation International. She has a MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Business.