Katherine Ponte
Katherine Ponte, BA, JD, MBA, CPRP is a mental health advocate, author, non-profit leader, entrepreneur, coach, and lawyer. She created the ForLikeMinds peer support platform for people with mental illness and their supporters and is a faculty member with the Yale University, School of Medicine, Program for Recovery and Community Health. Katherine has a BA in political science from the University of Western Ontario, a JD from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the child of Azorean, Portuguese immigrants and a first-generation high school graduate, who grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Canada where she was a leading education advocate. Katherine has been living with severe bipolar I disorder with psychosis and extended periods of suicidal depression for over twenty years. Since reaching recovery in 2018, Katherine has committed herself to helping people affected by mental illness reach recovery through various initiatives. She actively leads the ForLikeMinds online mental illness community of over 100,000 people and developed a platform of recovery-focused mental health initiatives around it. She created Psych Ward Greeting Cards, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that is a leading psychiatric hospital outreach program. The program distributes donated greeting cards with recovery messages, chocolate and small gifts from across the U.S. and abroad to psychiatric unit patients to inspire hope for recovery. It has reached over 15,000 patients. The program partners with leading psychiatric hospitals, including Gracie Square Hospital, Lenox Hill Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Payne Whitney Clinic, NewYork-Presbyterian Westchester Behavioral Health Center, and NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue in the New York City area. Katherine also created Serious Mental Illness Recovery Coaching, which provides one-on-one coaching to people with serious mental illness and their supporters. Katherine is the author of ForLikeMinds: Mental Illness Recovery Insights, cited as a "book of note" in You Are Not Alone: The NAMI Guide to Navigating Mental Health; Your Mental Health Recovery Workbook: A Workbook to Share Hope (Trigger Publishing) reviewed in Psychiatric Times, and Loving Someone with a Serious Mental Illness: Caring for Your Loved One and Yourself on the Journey to Mental Health Recovery (New Harbinger Publications, forthcoming, co-author). She is a contributor to the National Alliance on Mental Illness Blog and Psychology Today Blog. Her writings have been highly praised by the leading mental health recovery scholar, Larry Davidson, her mentor. The leading stigma scholar, Patrick Corrigan has called her a "thought leader in the recovery space." Her personal accounts have been published in Psychiatric Services and Schizophrenia Bulletin. She has been a speaker at the NewYork-Presbyterian Westchester Behavioral Health Center Psychosocial Rehabilitation Department Grand Rounds and at various industry conferences and seminars. She is also a Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner and New York Certified Peer Specialist-Provisional. Katherine is a member of the Board of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-New York City and a member of Fountain House. She is the recipient of the highest honor in the bipolar disorder community, the Mogens Schou Award. Katherine is committed to increasing mental health awareness, especially for people living with serious mental illness, through these efforts and by sharing her story publicly. Her Recovery Journey and Talking About Mental Illness videos have been viewed over one million times and writings have been viewed over 850,000 times. She has also been interviewed by major news outlets, including CBS, CNN, INSIDER, and WebMD on topics related to mental health. Katherine's life mission is to inspire others to believe that mental illness recovery is possible and to help them reach it. Katherine is a citizen of Canada, Portugal, and the United States. She is based in New York City and the Catskills where she lives with her spouse and tremendous supporter Izzy and their adorable British Shorthair Mel and irresistible Frenchie Lu.