Katherine (then Kathy) was a volunteer for Earth Day 1990 while still attending Menlo-Atherton High School, where she organized a class credit earning program to recruit fellow student volunteers for Earth Day. More than 60 students from MA participated, performing over 800 hours of work. In high school she had also started a recycling program and a teaching component at local elementary schools. When Earth Day 1990 events wrapped up, Katherine was determined to establish an ongoing environmental program for high school students. She became one of Bay Area Action’s co-founders.

At BAA, Katherine helped to design and implement the Schools Project (aka High Schools Group) with other students and Jim Steinmetz. During 1990–’91 an early program led by the students helped Bay Area high schools create recycling programs, in a time when local recycling infrastructure was nascent. By late 1991 the SG had helped new environmental clubs start at 15  schools.

Katherine also participated in and helped organize many “big BAA” events, including 1990’s Beat the Back-Up and 1991’s Festival for the Forests. In 1992–’93 she co-organized numerous BAA Café fundraisers for BAA, as well as much larger events such as Earth Day 1993 at Stanford, for which she served on the steering committee.

After “graduating” from the Schools Group, she worked on numerous environmental campaigns, worked as an environmental educator (mostly at the elementary level), and produced several fundraising events and programs for environmental organizations. She served as the Environmental Coordinator and Intern for the Peninsula School, and as a consultant for the Mid-Peninsula Environmental Education Alliance.

In 1995 Katherine became the executive director of Earth Circus, a performance troupe which brought awareness of environmental issues through dance and music, and which was a longtime BAA Affiliate.

Returning for a Schools Group Reunion in 2004, Katherine told attendees: “It’s so tremendous to be able to look back and see what you have done, to come back and see what you are doing.” ¹

BAA Council

1990

1991

1992

1993

1995

1996

1997

1998

Financial support 1990–2000

The BAA Archives* show Katherine’s donations to BAA as:

• No data yet

* Records may be incomplete. The BAA Archives are still being collated and researched.

Footnotes

1 — 2004-01-02, Mountain View Voice, “Being green for good: Environmentalists reunite after leaving local youth group”