Hi - I’m Katia.

I am passionate about helping people cultivate the personal shifts that enable them to transform their lives, their communities, and the world. 

I believe first and foremost in the power of experiential learning, and that healing and transformation happen most powerfully in the context of place and through relationship with ourselves, one another, and the land.

In this context, my work centers:

  • Practicing gratitude, curiosity, and a reciprocally connected relationship with all of life

  • Strengthening trust in one’s intuition, inner guidance and leading from our connection with Source

  • Developing intimacy with the natural world and remembering that we are nature

  • Building communities of mutual support, respect and collaboration

  • Actively carrying the question “What does healing look like?” in our work to counter legacies of oppression, supremacy and separation while cultivating justice, love and belonging

  • Cultivating one’s gifts and capacities to be in purposeful service on this critical time on the planet

Over the past 25 years, I have facilitated educational, international development, and leadership programs in more than 30 countries and with several First Nations around the world.

I currently teach leadership and wellness courses at Stanford University, offer my own coaching and guide training programs, coach leaders 1-1, lead retreats and nature immersion journeys, and serve as the Assistant Director for the Dalai Lama Fellows, a global contemplative leadership program for young social innovators. I’m also a dedicated mother of three boys ages 5, 15, and 18

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn through many ways of knowing, including extensive academic study, deep immersion in community-based wisdom traditions, being mentored by unparalleled guides, and my own transformative experiences. I have a BA (Latin American Studies) and MA (Education) from Stanford University, PhD (Leadership, Higher & Adult Education) from OISE-University of Toronto, and my MS in Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

All of my work, including the academic courses I teach, is highly experiential and embodied. If you are with me, you can expect to very quickly be engaging in contemplative practice, connecting with others in intimate dialogue, immersing yourself with the land, and bringing awareness to your body and all of your senses. Some examples of recent projects of mine from just the past year (22-23) include:

  • Designing a curriculum and facilitator training for a new 6-month somatic mindfulness-based equity dialogue circle program for all 750 employees of Marin County Health and Human Services

  • Designing a new course for Stanford University called “Living Leadership: Ecological and Contemplative Foundations,” which I teach outdoors on the campus farm and in which we center Indigenous knowledge by bringing in First Nations wisdom keepers

  • Designing and helping lead new curricular components for the global Dalai Lama Fellows (DLF) program

  • Piloting a brand new contemplative leadership and social innovation fellowship for students at Stanford

  • Creating and leading two cycles of Flourish, a new group coaching program

  • Creating a new retreat called Rejoice! focused on joy as a foundation for cultivating resilience and flourishing.

The Backstory

My start to this work began with my own transformative experience at the age of 17, which awakened my global consciousness and soon led me to Bolivia, South America, for a year of volunteer work in a rural Indigenous community. I returned to undertake a bachelor's degree in Latin American Studies at Stanford University, while continuing to regularly travel overseas to countries including Brazil, Nepal, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa, and several areas in the Caribbean and Europe, focusing on the areas of education, culture, and development. While at Stanford, I also began facilitating intercultural and interracial dialogue groups, which became the subject of my master's degree in education.  

After graduating in 2000, I moved to Israel to work with the International Teaching Centre for two years, where I focused on education and training projects around the world. My service path next led me to Calgary, Alberta, to work for Ghost River Rediscovery, a Canadian Aboriginal organization founded on principles of cultural rediscovery and reconnection to oneself, to the land, and to all people. As coordinator for their Youth Leadership Program, I helped expand the organization from one annual exchange project to six full-scale international education and development projects around the world.

In 2006, I began working on my PhD in Comparative, International and Development Education and the Dynamics of Global Change, through the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. My search to find innovative and leading edge models of leadership education brought me to explore the transformative effects of the Ecology of Leadership (EOL) program at the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas, California for my dissertation research. Upon completion of my PhD in 2013, I accepted the position of Co-Director and became a member of the leadership team.

In February 2020, we transitioned that organization. I launched a 5-month women’s initiation program, Tending our Sacred Living Waters, March-August 2020. I responded to the moment, offering online Grief and Healing Rituals through the spring in response to the pandemic, and then online interracial healing circles entitled Braiding Brave Belonging after the murder of George Floyd with my sister LaDasha Diamond Berry. And with our EOL community, we created a new virtual offering, Out Beyond: Engaging our Practices for Collective Healing and Rematriation, co-designed and facilitated with three of our BIPOC EOL alumni from October-December 2020.

In January 2021 I began the MSx Sloan Fellows program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a one-year intensive master’s of science in management program for mid-career leaders. I graduated in January 2022, and immediately began teaching at Stanford that quarter. The courses I have taught for undergrads and graduate students include “Living on Purpose,” “Claiming your Stanford Experience: People, Places and Ideas,” “Stepping into the River: Integrating Inner and Outer Engagement,” and “Living Leadership: Ecological and Contemplative Foundations.”

In addition to my formal education, I have taken many informal education trainings and hold certifications including Emotional Healing and Community Renewal (a year-long counseling training program), Cultivating Women’s Leadership, and Leadership and Outdoor Education.

I bow to my many teachers and mentors, including Basil Braveheart, Jeannie Kerrigan, Dr. Beth Hedva, James Stark, Belvie Rooks, Dedan Gills, Edmund O’Sullivan, Tommy Lee Woon, Diane Longboat, Arkan Lushwala, Sabine Lichtenfels, Sobonfu Some, Francis Weller, Dawn Payne, Tammy Goldthorpe, Jean-Paul Restoule, Nina Simons, Ysaye Barnwell, Gigi Coyle, Mike Lickers, Julian Norris, Kim Haxton, Pat McCabe, and my parents Nancy and Steve Wiatt.

I love singing, nature connection, building community, rivers and redwood trees, and spending time with my children Jalen (18), Mateo (15), and Kolea (5), and my partner in life, service, and love, Christopher Kuntzsch.