Some of my trainings & affiliations

• Co-Founder, Peer Health Exchange

• Eco-chaplaincy Program, Sati Center for Buddhist Studies

• Conflict coaching and mediation training, John Kinyon Professional Training Program (conflict transformation based in Nonviolent Communication)

• Fierce Allies JEDI (Justice, Equity, Decolonization, & Intersectionality) Dojo & Community of Practice

• Healing & Reconciliation Institute Facilitator Training

• Co-Founder & Co-Facilitator, Earth Activist Retreat at San Francisco Zen Center

• Covid Grief Network, Chaplain

• Mentored by Nonviolent Communication trainers & mediators (ongoing)

• Guided and mentored by Zen priests (ongoing)

Short bio

Katy Dion is a coach and facilitator who helps social impact leaders stop sacrificing their wellbeing to their purpose, so they can have both. In her early career she co-founded Peer Health Exchange, leading an organization that has created educational opportunities for 200,000+ young people to share the resources they need to make healthy decisions. She has trained as a chaplain with the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies and as a Nonviolent Communication conflict coach and mediator. She also draws on her experiences as a Zen monk, published author, and parent.

The bigger story

I have always had a sense that life is precious, fleeting, and happening right now.

My early career was in the social impact sector. In my twenties, I co-founded Peer Health Exchange, an organization that has created educational opportunities for 200,000+ young people to share the resources they need to make healthy decisions. When I left PHE, I continued to work for equity-oriented nonprofits while writing a later-to-be-published novel. I put my activism and writing on pause when I got sick in my early-thirties with a mystery autoimmune condition; that suffering brought me to a Buddhist monastery and contemplative practice—and probably saved my life.

I have teachers and mentors across many disciplines and fields. I am an ordained lay practitioner in the Soto Zen lineage. I trained with the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies as a chaplain, a person who serves as a compassionate companion to others in times of sorrow and joy: witnessing them, listening to them, honoring their truths, and offering prayer and ritual when invited—in other words, showing up for whatever is present. My training focused on ecochaplaincy, an approach to reconnecting humans with our responsibility to heal and be healed by the earth. I study and practice Nonviolent Communication, and other relational tools.

Writing is one of the tools I use to get to know my own mind and share its questions with others. My novel, The Dependents, was published by Little, Brown and has been translated into four languages. I am a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Mesa Refuge Pamela Krasny Moral Courage Fellow.

I live on Odawa land in Northern Michigan. My ancestors are Western and Southern European and Ashkenazi Jewish. I am committed to growing my understanding of my ancestors’ acts of harm and humanity, and how they reverberate through my life and actions. Collaborating with others in service of justice and equity is part of how I heal and repair.

My work in the world brings together the three strands of my path: activism, creativity, and contemplative practice. My experience in working with people is that almost everyone has a longing for all of these. A longing to be working for beneficial change; to express themselves with truth and beauty; and to connect with a spiritual source that speaks to the vast mystery of life and provides ballast in times of chaos and uncertainty. I'm committed to widening the circle of people who are tending these needs in themselves and others for our collective wellbeing and healing.