Rev. Diana Kosei Hartel

Rev. Diana Kosei Hartel is an ordained Zen Buddhist priest. She works for social and public health justice, which started with communities of color in the South Bronx, NY in the 1980s and 1990s. She holds a doctorate in epidemiology from Columbia University which she directly applied through research and public health intervention in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. During this time she was active in HIV prevention outreach for women, and she developed a national study of HIV in women while working at the National Institutes of Health. Two nonprofits were founded by her, the first located in the Bronx for food and environmental justice, and later another in southern Oregon for arts and environmental action. She was an exhibiting visual artist and a somatic trauma therapist prior to ordination, and an award-winning book, “Watershed Redemption” on the movement to restore watersheds throughout the U.S. was released in 2018.