About me and dancing resilience

Katie: Facilitator of participatory learning about trauma sensitivity, resilience, and creative approaches to peacebuilding. 20+ years focused on peace and justice education in varied contexts. Collaborative trainer, researcher, writer, curriculum designer and teacher of healing-centered movement modalities. See below for detailed bio.

Mission: Cultivate resilience and (re)generate creativity through collaborative, arts-based, embodied learning to foster healthy, just patterns and possibilities with people facing adversity and conflict.

Dancing? Working with me doesn’t require literal dancing. You choose.

Dancing resilience is a free online community that began March 14, 2020, inspired by the words of poet Alice Walker: “Hard times require furious dancing.” We typically dance 2x a day, 6 days a week, for about 20 minutes. Fill out the contact form or join the Facebook group Dancing Resilience for schedule and link information.

Detailed bio

Photo: Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore, 2022

Katie Mansfield, PhD Founder

Dr. Katie Mansfield works to foster just, life-giving patterns and (re)generate creativity through collaborative, arts-based, embodied learning with individuals and groups facing trauma, adversity, and conflict. For two decades working and learning in peace and justice education in various contexts, she has developed and facilitated in-person and online training in trauma sensitivity, resilience building, and creative approaches to peacebuilding. In recent years she has taught a range of courses including Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), Restorative Justice in Education, Trauma Responsive Project Planning, Creative Approaches to Peacebuilding, and Body Matters/El Cuerpo Importa. From 2015-2022, Katie was director and then lead trainer for STAR at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. She has facilitated trainings and developed and customized curriculum and care strategies for various partners, including groups in Afghanistan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Fiji, Germany, Lebanon, Kenya, Mexico, South Sudan, Tanzania, and organizations and communities around the US.


Previously she was based in Kenya (2010-13) as Peacebuilding Coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee after working with CDA Collaborative Learning Projects’ Listening Project (2008-09) and apprenticing with John Paul Lederach to support peace initiatives and peacebuilders in Southeast Asia, Argentina, Colombia, and in the US (2008-10). Her doctoral work in expressive arts and conflict transformation was anchored at EGS in Switzerland. Katie’s thesis was entitled “Re-friending the Body: Expressive Arts-based, Embodied Learning for Building Resilience.” She has also trained as a yoga instructor (RYT-200), in JourneyDanceTM, and in personal embodiment at the Tamalpa Institute in California. She is on the board of the Drums No Guns Foundation based in Richmond, Virginia, and she is actively engaged as a member of the Shalom Mennonite Congregation in Harrisonburg. Dancing and meditation are her daily medicines, including with the online Dancing Resilience community she and others established in 2020. She completed an MA in Peace Studies at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute and her AB in History at Harvard-Radcliffe. She also spent eight years on a rather different career path working for Goldman Sachs in New York and London (1996-2004). She is originally from a New York suburb and is currently based in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Collaborators, clients, and mentors

  • From Frank Dukes and Tanya Denckla Cobb of Institute for Engagement and Negotiation

    Katie Mansfield is one of the finest trainers and facilitators we know. After Frank spent a week with her serving as the lead trainer in the STAR training, we were thrilled that she agreed to work with the Institute for Engagement & Negotiation to enhance the skills of all of our staff. She helped us to enhance our knowledge and practice of trauma-informed facilitation and helped us identify priorities and strategies that had not been available to us before. She is generous, smart, highly knowledgeable, and a joy to work with.

  • Eunkyung Ahn, Transnational Educator and Restorative Justice Practitioner

    Katie fosters collaborative partnerships and supportive communities among co-trainers: meetings leading up to the workshop were marked by mutual respect, joy, and a collaborative spirit. During the intensive workshop, Katie's grounded and flexible approach enabled us to navigate the emergent dynamics that often arise in embodiment-centered workshops. Katie consistently prioritized the needs of individual participants and the group as a whole, fostering a safe and brave space.

  • Katia Ornelas, Leader, Ornelas Konsultant

    Together we create spaces where people have the opportunity to experience deconstruction and demechanization away from the mental, physical, emotional and relational routines and dynamics and systems that surround us. This is possible due to the creativity and the sense of being in the present moment that we bring into space.

  • Vernon Jantzi, Co-Founder of EMU Center for Justice and Peacebuilding

    Katie brings a holistic and authentic representation of what may often be presented as technical knowledge or technique in her work related to trauma and resilience education and her living restorative justice principles.