Tom Bell

Tom Bell joined Trungpa Rinpoche's community of students in 1972. He served as the head of practice and study at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center (now SMC) in the mid-to-late seventies, before entering the oil and gas business in 1978. In addition to Gold Lake Oil, Tom co-founded Colorado Gathering and Processing Corporation, which supplied natural gas to the city of Greeley, Colorado. He also co-founded the Colorado Natural Gas Assistance Foundation, which used profits from natural gas sales to help low income energy consumers pay their heating bills. Tom and his wife, Jacquie, and their children, Wilson and Victoria, moved to Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia in 1988, where he has been involved in a number of business and community projects. Most notably, Tom served as the general manager for the conversion of a former Canadian military base (CFB Cornwallis) into the village of Cornwallis Park. After serving as the Director of Karme Chöling from 2000 through 2003, Tom and Jacquie have returned to Nova Scotia where (recently retired) they study and practice the dharma between visits with their children and grandchildren.