Chris Punongbayan (he/him) is a lead teacher for the 2026 Mindfulness in Law Teacher Training. He is also a yoga and meditation teacher based in San Francisco, the unceded territory of the Ohlone Native American people. He draws inspiration from all of the diverse peacemakers striving to make the world fairer and more just. Chris has been practicing yoga on and off since 1995. But it wasn’t until 25 years after stepping on the mat for the first time – during the pandemic and racial reckoning of 2020 – that he discovered the transformative power of these practices to bring equanimity.
Chris profoundly believes in giving voice to the unheard, breaking down barriers, and creating strategic alliances to advance equity. He currently serves as the Executive Director of California ChangeLawyers (formerly the California Bar Foundation). ChangeLawyers is a public foundation whose mission is to build a better justice system for all Californians and is committed to empowering the next generation of legal changemakers. Prior to ChangeLawyers, he was the executive director of Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, the nation’s first Asian American legal civil rights organization. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in Asian American Studies and UCLA School of Law where he completed the Critical Race Studies concentration and the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. He is currently the Vice-Chair of the California Asian & Pacific Islanders Affairs Commission.
Chris has earned recognition from the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California (2022 Trailblazer), California Asian Pacific American Bar Association (2020 Attorney of the Year), San Francisco Mayor London Breed, the Ford Foundation New Voices Fellowship, the Gerbode Foundation, and the Levi Strauss Foundation, which named him a Pioneer in Justice.
Chris is the proud son of immigrants from the Philippines. He has a loving family with his husband including two kids adopted from the foster system and three cats, two of whom were adopted from the SPCA. He completed his 300 hour Yoga Teacher Training with Janet Stone Yoga, and finished his 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training in 2016 with Yoga Tree in San Francisco. He is an alum of the Mindfulness Lawyer Teacher Training 2022 cohort.
You can find Chris on YouTube, or follow him on Instagram for more.