Zac Willette MDiv is a teacher, writer, and board-certified chaplain. He has accompanied thousands of children and adults — including families and healthcare workers — through intense experiences of sickness, death, and healing. In addition to that work in ER/Trauma Centers and ICUs, Zac has guided canoe trips, taught kindergarten through graduate students, and told award-winning stories with The Moth. He inaugurated national roles with one of the country’s largest nonprofit health systems, as well as with two healthcare startups: one managing over 100,000 lives, and the other helping people in 24 states have brave conversations about death and dying, decades ahead of time. Currently, he serves with a female-led non-profit hospice as chaplain. He studies burnout and teaches stamina — and the many wily factors that contribute to both.

Zac earned his teaching degree at Vanderbilt University and his theology degree at Boston College. After adventures in Bolivia, the UK, and Antarctica, he now lives and works on Dakhóta land in Minneapolis. Zac bikes, appreciates fonts, and patronizes non-chain restaurants. The teams he trains often say “Zac made us more us.”