Kyosho Valorie Beer is a native of Southern California and has practiced Zen Buddhism since 1991. She was ordained as a priest in 2005 and received dharma transmission in 2013. Since 2001, she has also been a teacher of Sewing Buddha’s Robe and was trained in that tradition by Zenkei Blanche Hartman. Valorie was a resident monastic at San Francisco Zen Center from 2003-2014. Since then, she has been a visiting teacher to SFZC’s Branching Streams sanghas. Before taking up monastic life, Valorie received a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Southern California and then worked for two decades in Human Resources and Training & Development at high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. She also lived for 3 years in Germany. She is the author of four books, is a private pilot, and has a daughter who lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.