Katie Hearther, '20

Katie Hearther is a recent graduate from the University of Washington, Seattle campus. She was awarded a B.S. with a double major in Oceanography and Marine Biology in spring of 2020. She also minored in Arctic Studies, and traveled to Denmark and Greenland in August 2018 with the UW Study Abroad program to study the dynamics of the melting ice sheet and how climate change is directly affecting the citizens. Katie is a member of the 2018 NOAA Hollings Scholarship class, and completed a 10-week internship during the summer of 2019. She conducted research at the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Homer, Alaska, under the supervision of NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management. Katie recently accepted a Bonderman Fellowship, where she plans to visit high-latitude countries such as Greenland and Iceland to learn how the changing climate is affecting the people that live there. Katie is from Honolulu, Hawai’i and credits her father’s service in the Navy for initially inspiring her interest in the ocean. She is passionate about raising awareness of human effects on the environment such as climate change, ocean acidification, and plastic pollution, as well as the disproportionate affect of these things on minority and low-income populations. She hopes to earn a PhD and share her passion with others in order to inspire change for the better.