Katie is an environment and development economist by training, with over ten years of research, policy advisory, and evaluation experience primarily in East and Central Africa’s Virunga region, which spans Rwanda, Uganda, and DRC.

Katie joined Legado after six years as an economic statistician and GIS analyst at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), holding posts in UNDP’s Rwanda, Uganda, and Yemen Country Offices, and posts with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Forestry Division in Central Africa’s Congo Basin. Before Legado, she was also an impact evaluation consultant for Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, UNDP Yemen, MASS Design, and WWF Vietnam and Thailand, and an affiliated researcher with University of Rwanda Centre for GIS, International Gorilla Conservation Programme, and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Katie’s research has assessed community well-being, subjective resilience, multidimensional poverty, drivers of environmental degradation, and impacts of ecotourism in communities adjacent to tropical forests and protected areas like Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies and Applied Ethics from Dartmouth College, an MSc in Environment and Development Economics with Distinction from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment from Penn State.

Originally from the mountains and deserts of Utah, Katie loves cross-country mountain biking and was formerly a nationally ranked alpine skier on Dartmouth’s NCAA Division I team. She has been a CrossFit L1 trainer for six years and coached at CrossFit Kampala in Uganda and KigaliFit in Rwanda.