Camas Meditation Hall Executive Director

Imagine a place in the heart of Port Townsend where people of all ages, regardless of faith, background, or experience, can walk in and simply sit quietly together. Cedar and light. Gardens and paths designed to slow you down before you even reach the door. This is the vision of longtime Buddhist scholar and translator Bill Porter, carried home after twenty years in monasteries in Taiwan and China: a non-denominational meditation hall where people can breathe and still the mind, and where the peace found in stillness doesn't just stay in the room but radiates outward, into families, workplaces, and civic life.

That vision now has land, a design, and a name - Camas Meditation Hall - and it needs its first-ever leader. With the design phase complete and a $14 million capital campaign ahead, this is a true start-up opportunity for an inaugural Executive Director to build not just a building, but an organization from the ground up.

We're looking for a warm, experienced, entrepreneurial leader and a fearless fundraiser who thrives without a fixed playbook. You move fluidly between major donor conversations, foundation relationships, and grassroots community engagement, and bring the same curiosity and care to a founder-driven board as to a first-time visitor. You will, in tandem with the Board, personally cultivate and close gifts across individual, corporate, and foundation sources.

You'll also build and refine the organizational systems Camas Hall doesn't yet have, and build lasting roots in Port Townsend alongside the neighbors who call it home. This is a multi-year journey for a builder at heart, someone excited to bring people together in stillness, in a town that already knows how to gather.

Camas Meditation Hall is a non-denominational meditation hall taking shape in Port Townsend, Washington. Founded by Bill Porter, one of America's foremost translators of ancient Chinese poetry and Buddhist texts, the vision for Camas Hall grew out of his twenty years living in monasteries in Taiwan and China, where he saw firsthand how powerful it is to sit in stillness together.

He returned home determined to build that same gathering place here: not a church, not a yoga studio, but something at once both new and ancient.

A group of people inspired by Bill's vision came together to form the Camas Hall Board, and four years ago, the board and a small group of visionary donors acquired land in the geographic center of Port Townsend — a historic camas prairie, named for the flowering plant that sustained Indigenous peoples of this region for thousands of years. The building itself is being designed in partnership with architect Jim Olson, known for buildings that grow naturally out of their surroundings, and artist James Turrell, whose life's work explores light, perception, and stillness.

Together, they're bringing the Pacific Northwest's own quiet light into a space built for reflection, gathering, and quiet.

Camas Hall is grounded in a few simple convictions:

• Anyone, regardless of faith, background, or experience, deserves a place to sit quietly, together.

• Meditation practiced in community brings a kind of peace that solitary practice alone cannot.

• Inner stillness radiates outward — into families, workplaces, and civic life — making for a healthier, more compassionate community.

• A meditation hall belongs to everyone who walks through its doors: the curious, the grieving and the grateful, seasoned meditators and first-timers alike.

The land has been acquired, the building’s design phase is complete, and Camas Hall is ready to build. The organization is now entering its most pivotal chapter: a $14 million capital campaign to fund construction of the hall and…