Kristin Johnstad is a singer, dancer, community artist, contemplative guide, senior consultant and lifelong carrier of song.

Raised in a family of musicians and shaped by generations of music woven into everyday life, she has spent
decades exploring how voice, creativity and community can help people listen more deeply, connect across
difference and build something meaningful together.

Classically trained and a recipient of Schubert Club awards, Kristin spent more than a decade singing with
acclaimed gospel artist Robert Robinson and the Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir in Minneapolis. She
has performed in churches, community spaces, festivals and concert halls, including the Kennedy Center in
Washington, D.C.

But music is only one part of her story.
For many years, Kristin has worked as a senior consultant, facilitator and community builder with corporate,
nonprofit, educational and community organizations in the United States and internationally. Her work has
taken her to places including South Africa, Ireland, India and Israel.

She has worked with young people and elders, schools and communities, organizational leaders and people
at the thresholds of life. She has helped build community networks and educational systems, supported
large-scale visioning and organizational change, and explored ways of bringing arts and creative practice
more fully into civic and community life.

Her public speaking includes Unleashing and Sustaining a Big Vision, reflecting a thread that runs
through much of her work: how people gather around an idea, how communities sustain momentum, and
how vision becomes something lived rather than merely imagined.

Kristin is also deeply committed to contemplative practice and peaceful social change.  An ordained
Buddhist clergy member, she has woven movement, chanting, song, silence and deep listening into
retreats, interfaith gatherings and spaces of community care.
Over the past decade, her musical work has moved increasingly toward a cappella singing, hospice and
threshold choirs, community song circles, chanting and contemplative voice.
These worlds are not separate for Kristin.

The singer, facilitator, consultant, activist and community builder are all listening for the same thing:
What becomes possible when people are truly present with one another?
Her gatherings explore harmony and dissonance, sound and silence, movement and stillness, playfulness
and contemplation — not through perfection, but through presence.

At the School of Voice, Kristin brings this broad international body of experience into retreats, workshops,
community singing, contemplative gatherings, individual vocal exploration and collaborative projects.

She joins the School of Voice not simply as a teacher, but as a collaborator — bringing decades of
experience in music, facilitation, leadership and community building into the next chapter of our work.
The human voice was never meant to be carried alone.

Come with the voice you have.