KATHERINE PONTE – FOUNDER
Katherine Ponte, BA, JD, MBA, CPRP is a mental health advocate, writer, non-profit founder, entrepreneur, and lawyer. She is also a Lecturer in Psychiatry with the Program for Recovery and Community Health, School of Medicine, Yale University. She 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 immigrants and a first-generation high school graduate, who grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Toronto, Canada. 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. Katherine founded ForLikeMinds, an online peer support community for people living with or supporting someone with mental illness, and built a platform of recovery-focused mental health initiatives around it. She actively manages an online mental health community of over 85,000 people on the ForLikeMinds platform. She created Psych Ward Greeting Cards, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that is a leading psychiatric outreach program. The program distributes donated greeting cards with recovery messages and gifts to psychiatric unit patients, including in-person visits, as a form of peer support. It currently partners with the Payne Whitney Clinic at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Westchester Behavioral Health Center, Lenox Hill Hospital and Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital. Katherine also created BipolarThriving, which provides one-on-one Bipolar Recovery Coaching to people with bipolar and supporters. Katherine is the author of ForLikeMinds: Mental Illness Recovery Insights and a regular contributor to the National Alliance on Mental Illness Blog, the leading mental health blog in the U.S. 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, New York Certified Peer Specialist-Provisional, and New York Certified Addiction Recovery Coach. Katherine is a member of the Board of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-New York and a member of Fountain House. She is the recipient of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders' Mogens Schou Award for Public Service and Advocacy and the Columbia University Global Mental Health Programs' Innovative Women Leaders in Global Mental Health recognition. She 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 and writings have been viewed by well over one million people. She has also been interviewed by major news outlets, including Insider, CBS, CNN, and WebMD on topics related to mental health. A native of Toronto, Canada, Katherine lives in New York City and the Catskills. Katherine's life's mission is to share her hope and inspire others to believe that mental illness recovery is possible and to help them reach it.