Mildred Gordon

 1973 Gordon left NYC where she had founded GROW, an unaccredited school of group therapy that "turned out unlicensed group psychotherapists." Throughout 1972 GROW was the subject of state Attorney General and city fraud investigations into "fraudulent use of Ph.D.'s from unaccredited universities". Gordon went to San Francisco where she studied biofeedback which became the basis of what she termed "Feedback Learning". In SF Gordon met the five people who would become the original core-group of the Ganas community. 1979, the group settled in Staten Island, where they share ownership of eight houses and three commercial buildings that house their retail stores (there are about 65 non-core group residents). Gordon described Feedback Learning as an "indispensable day-to-day guiding experience" in which members of the community provide feedback—helpful criticism—to each other. Through daily discussions of every community member's behavior members can learn about themselves and their motivations, gain from hearing unpleasant truths, and "accept negative information with the excitement of discovery". Gordon left Ganas in 2001 but still returned to conduct Feedback Learning sessions. In 2015, Gordon passed away surrounded by friends and family. [cited Wikipedia]