Katie expertly navigates family and workplace power dynamics. She gained this expertise over two decades practicing family law in San Francisco; by conducting workplace investigations in companies, nonprofits, and schools; and through her master’s and bachelor’s level psychology education. Katie is an Association of Workplace Investigators Certificate Holder (AWI-CH) and has a T9 Mastered Title IX certificate for trauma-informed training.

Throughout her career, Katie has sought domestic violence restraining orders for people needing protection, and she has assessed threats within families and in the workplace. Katie litigates and mediates divorce and child custody matters, and she mediates disputes in family-owned businesses, including family offices. Katie advises Bay Area schools on executing their protocols and operations in view of the disputes between school parents.  

Katie takes pride in her premarital and post-marital agreements, which she has continually tailored over twenty years to factor in legal, economic, and cultural shifts, and which she writes in plain, comprehensible language.

Katie also works as a child advocate, both by serving as minor’s counsel (i.e., an attorney representing children in their parents’ child custody matters) and through her child-centered approach to representing parents in child custody cases.

From her master’s degree in counseling psychology and her work with families, companies, nonprofits, and schools, Katie understands psychologically complex individuals and groups, and she knows how to mediate, advocate, and investigate issues facing families and work teams. In both arenas, the people involved deserve an attentive mediator, advocate, or investigator; clearly explained insights; and well-written accounts of their presenting conflicts.

Katie has reported on California cases for the Daily Journal, The Bar Association of San Francisco Bulletin, Legal by the Bay, and Trial Insider. She has contributed attorney and judicial profiles for San Francisco Attorney Magazine. Katie’s newspaper publications include the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Noe Valley Voice. In April 2020, she published Urban Playground, her book of interviews with San Francisco children. From 2009 through 2023, Katie sat on the board for Amsha Africa Foundation (“AAF”), a nonprofit through which Katie facilitated pen pal relationships between U.S. and Kenyan children for fourteen years.

Katie earned her B.A. in Psychology from Fairfield University in Connecticut, her Master of Counseling degree from Arizona State University, and her law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Katie is a member of the Association of Workplace Investigators (AWI-CH); the Employment Law, Family Law, and Solo & Small Firm sections of the Bar Association of San Francisco; Joy in the Law; CouncilONE; ProVisors San Francisco 9; and the ProVisors Bay Area Lawyers Group.

Katie is a board member for the Center for Judicial Excellence, a Marin nonprofit protecting children in family law courts through judicial accountability; and for CouncilONE, a Bay Area community for small business owners.