(Unitarian Universalist Association)

Donne Hayden was born and raised in New Mexico. She completed a BA in English from the University of New Mexico and an MA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University. In May 2006, she graduated with Master of Divinity degree from Earlham School of Religion (ESR), Richmond, Indiana.

Before coming to ESR, Donne was a high school English teacher for over twenty years. Throughout her career, Donne taught in a variety of school environments, from her first teaching position in a small town on the edge of the Navajo Reservation to a large high school in Fort Collins, Colorado, to American schools in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Salzburg, Austria. She taught all levels, from middle school and basic ESL, to secondary Creative Writing and International Baccalaureate English, to freshman composition at Colorado State University and at Ivy Tech State College in Richmond, Indiana.

In Colorado, Donne also worked as a print and radio advertising copywriter and wrote feature articles for local magazines and newspapers. She was founding editor of a Colorado magazine called Changing Woman, and she worked as technical editor for a site-planning firm in Colorado Springs. Since coming to Indiana, she has written articles for ESR Reports and Right Sharing of World Resources and has done editing and proofreading for Friends United Press. As part of her work toward a Master of Divinity in the ESR Writing as Ministry program, she researched and wrote a book, A Sense of the Meeting: A History of Elk Monthly Meeting, 1805-2005, which was published by the West Elkton Friends’ Meeting (church).

In the spring 2007, Donne is in the process of finishing one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. Donne’s daughter, Krystin Schmidt, and her family live in Cincinnati, where Krystin is also finishing a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education with Jewish Family Service. Krystin is pursuing her goal of establishing a practice as a spiritual director. Donne’s grandson, Hyland, age 9, is in 3rd grade and is his grandma’s best buddy.