About
Kim Moore is a Buddhist chaplain and ordination candidate in the Theravada tradition. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has spent over 20 years in social justice and community organizing roles, including co-founding Partners in School Innovation and serving as Executive Director of the San Francisco Organizing Project. She integrates Buddhist practice with social change work and serves as a strategic growth consultant to the GRIP Training Institute. She is affiliated with Insight Meditation Center and Insight Retreat Center. Moore holds a BA from Stanford University and a master's degree in social anthropology from Oxford University.
Teaching focus
Moore's core teaching draws on mindfulness of breathing, noting practice, body sweeping. The frame is early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon, but the language stays plain. Moore doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include sila, samadhi, and the four foundations of mindfulness. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. There's a steady invitation in the talks to keep practice human-sized. Sit when you can, return when you've drifted, and trust that small consistent attention does more over the years than dramatic breakthroughs. Format-wise, Moore teaches in online, in-person, retreat, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Kim Moore is a Buddhist chaplain and ordination candidate in the Theravada tradition. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has spent over 20 years in social justice and community organizing roles, including co-founding Partners in School Innovation and serving as Executive Director of the San Francisco Organizing Project. She integrates Buddhist practice with social change work and serves as a strategic growth consultant to the GRIP Training Institute. She is affiliated with Insight Meditation Center and Insight Retreat Center. Moore holds a BA from Stanford University and a master's degree in social anthropology from Oxford University. Kim Grose Moore has spent more than 20 years advancing justice and equity in the San Francisco Bay Area, serving as Co-Founder of Partners in School Innovation, Executive Director of the San Francisco Organizing Project, and a leader within the PICO National Network (now Faith in Action). She has organized successful campaigns on affordable housing, healthcare, immigration, violence prevention, and criminal justice reform, and has provided executive coaching and strategic consulting to grassroots organizations across the region. Grounded in the belief that “the first revolution is internal,” Kim integrates spiritual practice with social change; she trained as a Buddhist chaplain, is a candidate for ordination in the Theravada tradition, and works as a strategic growth consultant to the GRIP Training Institute. A Rhodes Scholar, she holds a BA from Stanford University and a master’s degree in social anthropology from Oxford University, and lives in San Jose, inspired by her spiritual practice, community, and family. Moore teaches across several communities, including Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. That work sits within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon, and the recurring concerns of Moore's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Moore's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy.
Lineage
Moore teaches within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon. Source notes mention training with Insight Meditation Center. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Moore talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Moore, you can expect grounded instruction in mindfulness of breathing, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. On retreat the structure follows a classical rhythm of sittings, walking practice, and dharma talks, with silence held between sessions. Online sessions tend to keep the same shape, shorter sits, a talk, and time for Q&A, in a format that's accessible from home. The teaching voice is steady. Moore won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
