Billy Boyar, PhD (Karma Sherab Dorje) had a career as a professor of English. He had been a Zen practitioner for ten years when he encountered Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1985. After that, he immediately joined Vajradhatu (now Shambhala), where he taught Shambhala levels and Buddhist classes. Currently he focuses his teaching on the approach of Trungpa Rinpoche and the Kagyu/Nyingma lineages. He also leads a group of Kagyu ngöndro practitioners and a group doing the Mahamudra investigations.

He is a practitioner of Vajrayogini, Chakrasamvara, the Dharmas of Naropa, the Mahamudra, and Dzogchen. He loves studying the Pali Canon, the Mahayana sutras, and the treatises of Maitreya.

His aspiration is to let go of his many fixations, of which his dear wife, Ginny, kindly reminds him.