Yael Shy is the Founder and Director of MindfulNYU (the largest campus-wide meditation initiative in the country) and the Senior Director of the Center for Global Spiritual Life at New York University. She leads meditation workshops, classes, and retreats around the country and the world, including at NYU Abu Dhabi, NYU Berlin, NYU Tel Aviv, Mindful Life, Princeton University, and elsewhere and teaches weekly at MindfulNYU and at the meditation studio MNDFL in Greenwich Village.

In 2010, Shy was named one of the "36 under 36" change-makers transforming the Jewish world by Jewish Week newspaper. She has practiced meditation regularly in Jewish, Zen Buddhist, and secular contexts. Yael has been published in the Harvard Business Review, the Huffington Post, the Journal of Interreligious Studies, the NYU Review of Law and Social Change, among other publications. Yael Shy lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.