Ph.D. Saybrook Institute
Restaurant Owner
Bamboo Restaurant & Gallery
Hawi, Hawaii 96719
joanchannon@gmail.com
Together with a group of San Francisco associates, Joan was one of the earliest Citizen Diplomats working with US-Soviet relations. She was executive assistant to Jim Hickman at the Esalen Institute US-USSR Exchange program which fostered numerous initiatives including bringing astronauts and cosmonauts together and broadcasting the first international concert from the US Festival in California to Moscow. She was co-founder with Cynthia Lazaroff of the US-USSR Youth Exchange Program which promoted interactions between youths including pen pan exchanges, and brought teens together to climb Mt. Elbrus in the Caucasus mountains. Joan is an intrepid adventurer and is the first Western woman to see the Kongka Rizumgonga range in Tibet, and she traveled 1600 miles down the Amazon River in a banana boat with five Indians. At present she splits her time between Mexico and Hawaii, where she owns and manages a happy restaurant.
