Dr. Kathryn Peterson is a program officer at the Schultz Family Foundation where she works to advance opportunities for young adults to access, forge, and sustain pathways to thrive into adulthood. 

Motivated by her own experiences in foster care, Kathryn has dedicated her career to serving youth most impacted by our child welfare, justice, and education systems through direct service supports, tri-sector partnerships, and advocacy efforts. She comes to the foundation with a decade of experience in education and youth development programming, where she has partnered with young people and communities to expand access to alternative workforce pathways that lead to educational attainment and community-sustaining employment. 

As a Gates Millennium Scholar, Kathryn graduated from Bushnell University in Oregon and began her career as an early childhood educator in bilingual classrooms. She went on to finish her master's in educational leadership and policy studies from Boston University, where she focused largely on issues of educational justice for emergent bilingual students in traditional school settings. In 2021, she earned her Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Washington's Leadership for Learning Program (L4L), where she explored the impacts of restorative justice practices in alternative education settings and used this data to help convince state and federal lawmakers to expand the availability of wrap-around funding for workforce development programs serving opportunity youth.

When she isn't working, Kathryn is almost always at an antique store, creating new recipes and sharing a meal with friends, or tending to her indoor jungle of over one hundred plants.