Kelly Bannister, MSc, PhD, is a fun-loving spirit from the west coast of Canada who is being unmade and remade through Somatics, Aikido and Zen practice. She is a ZL instructor, a certified teacher in Movingness (somatic movement), a certified embodiment coach through Embodiment Unlimited and a FEBI Certified Coach. She practices Aikido with Victoria Aikikai and trains in Zen with Chosei Zen. She has studied meditation and Aikido-based conflict resolution with the Integral Dojo, embodied peace-making with Being In Movement®, Zen-based conflict resolution with Two Arrows Zen, and integral facilitation with Ten Directions.

Kelly’s academic expertise is ethnobotany and applied intercultural ethics. Her passion is how embodiment approaches can aid us in understanding how to work well across different worldviews and knowledge systems, use conflict for transformation, and draw from wisdom traditions to address pressing social, ecological and cultural issues and inequities of our time. She facilitates values-based collaboration across Western scientific and Indigenous knowledge systems that respects and protects Indigenous rights and responsibilities. She has been involved in evolving policy and practice related to biocultural diversity research, ethics and education at local to international levels for 3 decades. Her academic home is the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria.

Kelly co-hosted IZL’s One Earth, One Health, One With summit in 2023 and the Living and Leading with Deep Resilience summit in 2024. She supports ongoing IZL programs and organizational development.