For more information on DeeDee Torrell, visit her Web site.   Read more about our students and graduates.

Graduate Profiles

AIHT graduate, DeeDee Torrell, Ph.D.
in Metaphysics                                     

DeeDee Torrell—also known as Swami Chitraananda—hit the national media airwaves in 1991, as a rising corporate executive and author. Her polite discontent with the American workplace had spawned a book entitled Heart-Business: Building a Kinder, Gentler Workplace.

Its penetrating assessment of the modern-day working environment was bravely embraced and even lauded, first regionally and then internationally, by her Fortune 500 employer. Throughout the rest of her 19-year tenure at AT&T its reinvented, post-divestiture mindset actively championed Torrell’s passionate spirit of kindness as a rebalancing antidote to the competitive bull pen. Her corporation explored new approaches to communicate its core values—with handbooks and position papers, articles, motivational videos and a teaching platform.

DeeDee Torrell was actually gaining her own corporate persona, as “The Ministry Lady of AT&T.”

Interestingly, the year 1991 was also the springboard for a new distance learning school, American Institute of Holistic Theology. DeeDee’s “New Thought” approach to spirituality in the workplace was starting to manifest as a growing discontent with her present course of studies, and AIHT is thankful that a Higher Knowing led her to other ways of learning…in a word, to us!

“AT&T was sponsoring my doctoral studies at a traditional liberal arts university, and I had almost completed a seminary program. But ironically, the more I learned about the teaching environment the more I knew that my true calling was more personal than that, more attuned to one-on-one coaching.”

In her own corporate vernacular, DeeDee longed to reach out and touch someone, rather than preaching to the masses.

Admirably, her bosses rose to the occasion and demonstrated their own ability to “practice what DeeDee preached.” AT&T allowed her to start a new doctoral program, at a new school, and to follow her heart’s calling—with AIHT!

Ultimately she answered the cultural call of Celtic and Scottish studies, and Kriya yoga. Stepping off the corporate fast-track, DeeDee Torrell’s rewards for trusting the Small, Quiet Voice are far-reaching and far-flung. Her thriving holistic practice began in Chatham, NJ and now spans the Emerald Sea to Scotland, from the U.S. to the U.K.

Her ongoing study groups include metaphysics and psychic prophecy, from Edgar Cayce to Eastern philosphy, Catholicism, and Biblical teachings. A relatively new gathering, her “Men’s Knight Group,” explores the intriguing paradox of yin and yang with humorous, informative topics and a safe space for frank discussion…so to speak.

For more information: www.compassionateheart.com.