Oct 23, 2020
Diane was the first Director of the Office of Alternative Dispute Resolution for the Utah Judiciary, where she established mediation programs throughout the court system.
She has mediated a broad range of disputes and transactions including divorces, probate, employment, contracts, and multi-party negotiations. She works with consummate ease in a variety of settings including private industry, governmental agencies and non-profit and of course individuals. She is well known as an innovator in dialogues, especially conversations about culture, religion, race and gender relations.
She is the recipient of several prestigious awards for her work in this area, including the Peter W. Billings Award from the Utah State Bar, the Utah Council on Conflict Resolution Peacekeeper Award, the Judicial Administration Award and Friend of the Court, and most recently, the 2016 Peacemaker Award from the BYU Center for Conflict Resolution.
Diane has been a practitioner of meditation for over 35 years. Diane began her studies at Naropa University in 1983 with Choygam Trungpa Rinpoche, and became a Zen student in 1997. In 2003, she received ordination as a Zen monk with her husband Michael Zimmerman, and received dharma transmission from Genpo Roshi in 2006. For her, Zen practice is a fundamental commitment to experiencing reality as it is — beautiful, ungraspable and seamless.
Diane facilitates Big Mind Big Heart, a process developed to help elicit the insights of Zen in Western audiences. Diane is considered a pioneer in articulating and applying the insights of an Integral Life Practice based on work of Ken Wilber. Since 2004, she has worked with Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute in Denver, Colorado.
In 2008, Diane co-founded Two Arrows Zen, a center for Zen study and practice in Salt Lake City and Torrey, Utah with her husband Michael Mugaku Zimmerman. She is the Executive Director of Two Arrows Zen and co-founder of the Integral Facilitator, a training program oriented to personal development and advanced facilitator skills.
Diane is the author of Everything is Workable: A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution, (2013, Shambhala Publications) and The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone (March 2017, Shambhala Publications). Her next book, co-authored with Gabriel Wilson and Kimberly Loh is Compassionate Conversations: How to Speak and Listen from the Heart, in-press with Shambhala Publications and scheduled for release in May, 2020.