Katherine Ponte is a mental health advocate, writer, and entrepreneur dedicated to promoting mental illness recovery and wellness based in New York City. She has degrees in political science and law from two leading Canadian universities and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Katherine was first diagnosed with major depressive disorder and then severe bipolar I disorder with psychosis twenty years ago while in graduate school. She is in recovery. Katherine has taken these experiences and a history of community service and advocacy to develop ForLikeMinds – an online community aimed at increasing engagement among people living with or supporting someone with mental illness, substance use or a stressful life event, including college students and their parents. Katherine is also a Faculty Member of the Program for Recovery and Community Health, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Yale University. She is also the founder of Bipolar Thriving a bipolar recovery coaching service that helps people affected by bipolar reach recovery. Katherine is also the creator of Psych Ward Greeting Cards a program where she visits psychiatric units in New York City to share her personal lived experience of recovery and distribute donated greeting cards. She serves on the Board of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-New York City, the largest affiliate of the leading mental health non-profit organization in the US and is a monthly contributor to the NAMI National Blog. She also actively collaborates with the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Yale University. Her life’s mission is to share her hope and inspire others to believe that mental illness recovery is possible and help them reach it. In two years since reaching full recovery and starting to share her story publicly, her work has reached over one million people.
