Kate began her career at United Way of Central Iowa in 2002 as the Executive Director for Polk County Early Childhood Iowa. In that position, Kate worked to create a collaborative system for government and local nonprofits to support at-risk children from ages 0-8 and their families. The outcome of that work was a much more collaborative system and higher quality early childhood services in central Iowa.
Kate has served as the Community Impact Officer, Education Success since 2012. She spearheaded the 2020 goals to raise the graduation rate in Polk, Dallas, and Warren counties from 83.4% in 2008 to 93.6% in 2019. This increase of 10.2% means 6,300 more students graduated opposed to if the graduation rate remained at the 2008 statistic. For the last two years, Kate has been a part of the team who created the United to Thrive framework, which UWCI officially launched in May 2021. This framework maintains a strong education focus while looking through an equity lens and COVID recovery. Kate is the staff lead for two volunteer cabinets who guide this work: Early Childhood Success and Education Success. Kate is looking forward to this next exciting chapter in central Iowa.