Katie has spent more than a decade chasing water across the West, always returning to the Colorado Plateau as the heart of her interests. A riparian ecologist by trade and a reverse snowbird by chance, she spent many summers working in high-desert river and stream monitoring and restoration programs, and seven winters as a professional ski patroller observing water at its source in mountain snowpacks. During this time, she also supported Partners through graduate research and as a watershed field coordinator.

She holds a Master of Environmental/Public Land Management and is completing her M.S. in Ecology at Western Colorado University, where her research has centered on understanding long-term riparian change in the Escalante watershed and Glen Canyon. She earned her undergraduate degree in environmental science from the University of Virginia in 2014.

When she isn’t working or studying, she is somewhere outside with her partner, their reluctantly retired avalanche dog Josie Bassett, and their happily rescued mutt Iris.