Katherine is the founder of GDSI, a portfolio spin and expansion of her work as CEO of the executive search firm NPAG. GDSI meets the broader leadership support needs of organizations in a rapidly changing social sector. 

A psychologist by training, Katherine designed, built, and led NPAG’s unique business model, team growth, and client success as Partner and CEO for nearly 20 years to challenge and reform a transactional status quo in the executive search sector that perpetuates systemic barriers, disproportionately extracts resources from nonprofit programs and services, and fails to prepare leaders for success.  Her leadership introduced fully tailored, human-centered, and values-based approaches to recruiting new leaders who could transform and diversify philanthropic, nonprofit, academic, and public sectors to be more impactful for the communities they served.  

Katherine launched GDSI to focus her work on stronger governance, strategic organizational design, tailored executive search, and agile interim leadership to evolving organizations, coalitions, and purpose-aligned partnerships serving communities nationally and globally.  Over decades of deep leadership work in the sector, Katherine has observed organizations challenged in their most critical leadership transitions by threats to funding, internal misalignment, and the need for vision for how to harness the power of new business models and emergent technology. Through GDSI, Katherine has committed to bringing her skills as a psychologist and search professional with grounding in restorative and adaptive leadership approaches, to pioneer the integration of best practices in governance, change management, role and team design, interim supports, and executive recruitment for a thriving social sector.  

In her personal time, Katherine is a proud mom to two talented teenagers and nurtures her love of music, nature, and animals from her 1840s farmhouse in Loudoun County, Virginia.  A Fulbright scholar, avid traveler, and former U.S. State Department community member, she has lived and worked in five countries. She speaks conversational German and basic Russian and Greek. Katherine earned a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Rochester while training as a classical cellist at the Eastman School of Music and holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Georgetown University.