Katie is focused on finding ways to sustain working landscapes by integrating ecological and economic goals for rangeland, wildlife and habitat management. Ranching is part of the fabric of western culture, important not only to local livelihoods, but for the natural connection it creates between people, land and nature. Protecting working landscapes is as much about conserving this connection and way of life as it is about conserving habitat and open space for wildlife. Katie has a master’s in Conservation Biology from Columbia University where she studied songbird nest survival as it related to habitat connectivity. For the past three years, Katie has worked on large landscape conservation in the Rocky Mountain West. Off the clock, Katie eschews responsibility preferring to disappear into the great outdoors with her capricious and codependent hound, Koda. If her passion for the natural world wasn’t so powerful, she would have become a jockey or a spy.