About
The Rev. Dr. Margaret Izutsu
The Rev. Dr. Margaret (Maggie) Izutsu spent much of her early adulthood in Japan, both during her undergraduate degree at Oberlin College and after graduating with a BA in East Asian Studies, as well as following her work as program director for the Mental Health Association of Washington in 1979–1980. She married into the culture and did most of her training there as a psychotherapist, helping found The International Counseling Centre in Kobe. She also worked as a translator, interpreter, teacher, editor, TV talent, and negotiator, serving in government, the media, and the private sector.
She returned to the States in 1990 to train for and enter the ministry as a third-generation Episcopal priest. After earning her MDiv at Harvard Divinity School, she went on to do a doctorate there in comparative religion. Serving on the faculty and administration of the Seminary of the Southwest brought her to Austin, Texas, in 2004, where, a few years later, she conducted a pilot project to see if Japanese memorial customs could be adapted for use in North America.
She is the founder and CEO of The Rite Source, LLC, which provides counseling, education, and consultation and oversees an interactive website for individuals and groups of mourners, therapists, and other helping professionals and bereavement theorists to collaborate on offering better support for grief and spiritual development. She is currently spearheading a new pilot program called, “Room For You,” which is a workshop for developing the skills and habits needed for constructive and creative conversations across the political divide.
Brian McRae
Brian is a native Texan with 30 years’ experience in Austin. He started out in software engineering before moving into sales, marketing and strategic partnership. Recently, his love of motorsports has led him to build high-performance partnerships in racing. Brian excels at entering complex environments fully, learning them from the inside, mastering systems thinking, performance, and operating under pressure.
Brian approached firearms similarly, becoming deeply emerged and highly trained, training others in turn. His ability to see both sides of the gun control argument—and how they each get it wrong—was what led to his joining Room For You and collaborating with Mike and Maggie on developing and executing their initial eight-week cohort to significant acclaim. He tries to impart to the participants the necessity of pursuing the truth for oneself and not settling for surface-level understandings. He models the ability to sit with discomfort and complexity, in humility and with the courage to move beyond ideology. Brian is currently at work on a memoire and, separately, a Canon of the New Masculinity. He is a devoted husband and the father of three sons.
Mike Halprin
Mike earned his Environmental Design degree from Texas A&M and went to work as an architect for two successful design firms in Dallas before marrying his wife and changing jobs in the year 2000. He worked at Ross Perot’s EDS until the bubble burst in 2001. This time, Mike landed in Lakeway, where he became the indispensable computer guy who makes house calls. His devoted clientele is even more impressed with his ability to talk across the political aisle. Deeply and broadly informed, genuinely curious and compassionate, and a fountain of personal, approachable and affable anecdotes, Mike makes his encounters not only pleasant and memorable, but collaborative and constructive. Despite clear and often startling differences, invariably his clients clamor for more, stating how much they have needed just this kind of conversation. For him, conversations like these is what makes his job worth doing and life worth living.
Mike found the files that had disappeared on Maggie’s computer and went on to regale her with hours of describing these conversations. Breaking down what makes them work, together with Brian McCrae, they devised an eight-week series of workshops for brushing up on—or learning initially—skills, habits and tools for engaging in meaningful dialogue. In addition to modeling these skills in affecting stories, Mike’s training in competitive marksmanship brings a slightly different angle to the conversation about guns and gun control which has become a centerpiece of the work of Room For You.
On any given day, you might find Mike polishing his craft as he tends his bees in his backyard, going over conversations and trying to imagine how he might do it better next time. Mike is the father of a teenage boy and lives in Lakeway with him, his wife, two dogs and five beehives.
Ray Hawkins
Ray Hawkins, PhD, ABPP (Clinical Psychology) is a licensed psychologist who has been engaged in clinical health psychology and research for over 50 years, beginning with his doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Special areas of interest include binge eating disorder and evidence-based group and individual treatment for this population.
Ray has co-founded and/or served as staff psychologist as well as on the faculty at several Austin institutions, including the University of Texas and the Seminary of the Southwest, where he taught in a program directed by Dr. Izutsu. He has also served on the faculty of a California-based graduate program in psychology.
In November 2024, Ray received the “Outstanding Contribution to Education” award from the Texas Psychological Association. It was around this time that Maggie began consulting with him on the Room For You workshop as it was taking form. Ray has had a long interest in and involvement with questions of spirituality as it affects clinical practice and vice versa as well as in finding a way to talk across political divides. His strong clinical and educational background has been critical in making sure that the program for Room For You was soundly designed. He continues to lend a generous ear and encouragement to our efforts at fine-tuning our methods and materials.
Ray has a new book in press (Healing Outcomes: An Integrative Approach for Measuring Psychotherapy Effectiveness, Springer Nature Publisher).