Katie Wyndorf 

Katie Wyndorf is an educator, herbalist, and community cultivator based in Burlington, Vermont. For over 25 years, she has worked as a teacher and mentor to young people in public schools and international, bilingual, and nature-centered education programs. A self-described dreamer, disruptor, and “student of the breath,” Katie brings deep compassion and imagination to her teaching practice, guiding 6th-grade students to learn, reflect, and connect in ways that honor curiosity, belonging, and the natural world.

Her work lives at the intersection of healing, liberation, and education. As a white, cisgender woman committed to unlearning supremacy and embodying equity, Katie has journeyed through communities of racial justice, mindfulness, and climate resilience—centering reflection, humility, and care as lifelong practices. Her passions also extend into herbalism and contemplative ecology, where she tends to a garden of medicinal plants that remind her what it means to live in relationship with reciprocity.

Through the Acosta Institute Fellowship, Katie hopes to deepen her healing-centered pedagogy and co-create liberatory frameworks for education rooted in love, imagination, and collective care. She is eager to learn alongside fellow visionaries, cultivating what she calls “the exhale”—a space where educators and communities can slow down, begin again, and return to what matters most.