Kate is a proud San Francisco native with a long history in the outdoor industry. While an undergrad at UC Berkeley, she skied, backpacked and climbed while working with the iconic outdoor shop, The Ski Hut, and found her calling sourcing and designing clothing from around the world that would ultimately help define the current outdoor lifestyle. During this time, she was also introduced to the urgent need to protect intact wilderness. She moved to Ventura in 1982 to begin her sixteen-year tenure as Design and R&D Director at Patagonia. She consulted with several outdoor companies before joining Santa Barbara-based Toad&Co as Director of Design & Sustainability. For years she served as their ambassador to The Conservation Alliance, engaging colleagues in conservation and advocacy and joining annual lobbying trips to Washington, DC. She currently serves on The Conservation Alliance board, whose mission is to harness the collective power of business to fund and advocate for the protection of North America’s wild places. (VLT has been a recipient of 2 TCA grants!)

As a founding member of the Ventura Hillsides Conservancy, now Ventura Land Trust, Kate helped produce the Ventura Hillsides Music Festival for a decade. Kate’s husband, Roger, a lifelong Ventura native, deeply value the extraordinary quality of life we have here. When not advocating, Kate enjoys the good life – outdoors, good food, dogs, travel, natural beauty, and the surf outside her front door.