James Ishmael Ford, Roshi has been a Zen practitioner for nearly fifty years. He is both ordained as a Soto Zen Buddhist priest and as a koan teacher in the Harada Yasutani tradition. He served on the membership committee of the American Zen Teachers Association for ten years, and a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Soto Zen Buddhist Assocition. James is the senior member of the guiding teachers council of the Boundless Way Zen network, and resident priest and teacher at the Blue Cliff Zen Sangha in Long Beach, and Costa Mesa, California.

He is also an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. He is minister-emeritus of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, in Rhode Island. And is currently affiliated as a community minister with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach, in California.

He is the author or editor of five books, mostly addressing aspects of Zen history and practice, as well as articles for Buddhadharma, Lion's Roar, Tricycle, and the Unitarian Universalist World. He blogs as Monkey Mind, which is hosted by the religion portal Patheos. He lives with his spouse Jan Seymour-Ford in Long Beach, California.