Our Coaches
Dion Flynn, BA, MFA, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, is a teacher, improviser, comedian, performer, motivational speaker, writer, musician, and Army veteran best known for his impersonation of Barack Obama on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, among his more than 100 appearances on the show. If Dave Chapelle and Eckhart Tolle had a son who taught the spirituality of improv, it would be Dion.
Dion discovered that the skills he used on stage and for TV, for both improvisational and scripted comedy, paralleled the skills needed in recovery from process and substance addiction. The same skills also came in handy for basic human development and for transacting business. This led to the creation of The Improvisor’s Mindset, a distillation of connections between these theatrical skills and the critical skills needed for successful long-term recovery for addicts, grounded connection for the spiritual seeker, and an enhanced business and personal life for the rest of us.
Dion sees the journey from isolation to connection as the basic journey of any recovery and the basic storyline of the soul.
Dion has performed with, taught, or led improv workshops for Google, UniLever, MTV, VH-1, Logo, Rock The Vote, PNC Bank, Herman Miller, The M&A Advisor, Ardent, Maersk, PWC, Ecolab, The North Carolina Lawyers Association, and more. He holds a master’s of fine arts degree in acting from New York University’s Graduate Acting program and has worked with Spike Lee, Rosie O’Donnell, Kate McKinnon, Josh Radnor, and has performed at Shakespeare In The Park, The Public Theater, The Guthrie Theater, The Moth Storytelling, Armed Services Arts Partnership, and with many other world-class artists and organizations.
Cited by Oprah Magazine as “one of our favorite creative thinkers…” Dion is an expert in fun and innovative ways to help people connect with themselves and others, he’s led scores of people through his Improv Recovery Workshops.
Dion Flynn
George Walsh is an improvisation teacher and jazz musician who studied improv and acting in NYC at The People’s Improv & Magnet Theaters as well as HB Studios. He’s taught and written comedy for The Improvisor’s Mindset for the past 2 years, working with Fortune 500 companies and co-leading a weeklong retreat at The Omega Institute. He’s performed with improv groups Blunderbuss, Fairfield of Dreams and FSU and has performed at the NYC Improv Festival, Sketchfest, Solocom and Fake Church.
George Walsh
MEET FOUNDER OF THE IMPROVISOR’S MINDSET
DION FLYNN
Kat Koppett
Kat holds a B.F.A. in Drama from New York University and an M.A. in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, and continually seeks to combine the wisdom and strengths of both disciplines to create programs that are both practical and transformative. Her book Training to Imagine: Practical Improvisational Theatre Techniques to Enhance Creativity, Teamwork, Leadership, and Learning, is considered a seminal work in the field of Applied Improv and is used by professionals around the world.
Kat has designed and delivered programs for such diverse clients as Apple, Chanel, Prezi, Kaiser-Permanente, GE, St. Peters Hospital, JPMorgan Chase, Eli Lilly, Facebook, and The Farm Bureau in places such as India, Brazil, Paris, Budapest and Oklahoma. Her areas of special interest include executive coaching, leadership, presentation and communication skills development, creativity and innovation facilitation, teamwork and conflict resolution. An adjunct professor at RPI’s Lally School of Business, Kat has presented at Stanford, UC Berkeley as well as ASTD, ISPI, NSA, the YPA, NASAGA, AIN and many other organizations with initials. She has given two TEDx talks on the use of improv to enhance non-theatrical performance.