Passionate about building capacity for social impact, Kate Catherall brings over 15 years of leadership experience in public engagement, advocacy, and electoral politics. As a strategist, researcher, and organizer, she has worked on some of the most pressing issues of our time, both at home and around the globe. Kate has worked and led trainings in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, with partners hailing from more than 40 countries.

Prior to founding Slow Clap, Kate served as Senior Advisor and Chief Engagement Officer at Avalanche Insights, a firm that specialized in qualitative research at scale and the development of emotionally resonant messaging (acquired by A—B partners in 2023). There, Kate led the team that guided messaging for more than $1B in media spending during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. During her tenure, Kate’s team guided narrative development for national organizations on a range of key issues including clean energy, reproductive freedom, gun violence, gender equity, and affordable housing.

Kate is the Co-founder and formerly Senior Partner of Arena, an organization that convenes, trains, and supports the next generation of progressive candidates and political professionals. She now serves the organization as Board Chair, and continues to train at Arena Academies. Since 2017, Arena has helped to elect 61 candidates to Congress, state, and local offices, and has trained more than 7,180 campaign professionals through Arena Academy. Arena is focused on supporting a more diverse leadership pipeline: 58% of Arena Academy graduates are women, and 55% are people of color.

Before building Arena, Kate was a Senior Vice President at 270 Strategies, where she consulted on public engagement strategy, behavioral research, and organizational design for candidates, advocacy organizations, and philanthropies. At 270, Kate’s portfolio included clients leading in the fields of civic engagement, education reform, public health, international conflict resolution, and food security. As part of her work with the Alliance for Science, Kate commuted to Ithaca to teach a global fellowship course on campaigns and movement-building at Cornell University.

Kate got her start as an organizer on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, and has since worked with dozens of candidates up and down the ballot including rising stars like Lauren Underwood, Cory Booker, Lina Hidalgo, and Andy Kim. She resides in Oakland, California with her partner Conrad and her retriever mix, Louie. Kate spends as much time outside as possible, and loves film, music, writing, travel, forest bathing, and pizza.