Katie is the Senior Technical Advisor for Early Childhood Development at the International Rescue Committee, and has over fifteen years of experience working in the field of early childhood development, education and sustainable development. Katie led the technical design of the Sesame Seeds initiative for the IRC, which received the inaugural MacArthur 100&Change award in December 2017 to provide critical early childhood programming in response to the Syrian crisis. Katie began her career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador, where she lived in a rural community for 2 years teaching in a rural school and developing health education and income generation projects. She first worked with the IRC in 2005 as the education manager in Chad, supporting Darfurian refugees to build and improve educational and recreational programs for children and youth. After returning to the U.S., Katie began working at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, where she became the Deputy Director of the Global Master’s in Development Practice Secretariat. Currently a PhD candidate in Applied Psychology and Human Development at the University of Pennsylvania, Katie has conducted research in early childhood development in Central America, Ecuador, India, Kenya, Mexico and Thailand. Katie has an MPH from the University of Pennsylvania, an MEd in International Education Policy from Harvard and a BA from Johns Hopkins University.