Kate Parrot

Kate is a doctoral student in Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her work focuses on collaborative governance across business, government, and civil society sectors. Her research interests include organizational change, environmental sustainability, leadership development, and the theories and practices of dialogue and communication that enable people to produce generative change. Kate subscribes to an action research approach, which involves research participants (rather than subjects) as active collaborators in building and testing theory and practice in order to bring about positive change in people's lives.

Prior to her PhD work, Kate earned an M.S. degree in Technology and Policy from the Engineering Systems Division at MIT and simultaneously worked towards an M.A. in Conscious Evolution from the Graduate Institute (www.learn.edu). During this time, she was a core staff member for the Generative Change Community, which promotes dialogic practices in support of individual, organizational, and systems transformation. Kate has also worked with Generon Consulting in Cambridge, MA and Global Action Network Net in Boston, MA. Kate previously held positions at the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colorado, where she managed several projects on corporate sustainability. She has also worked in municipal water resources and planning in Colorado, in environmental consulting in California, and as a backcountry researcher in Alaska. She holds a B.S. degree in biology, magna cum laude, from the Oakland University Honors College in Rochester, Michigan. She currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and enjoys bicycling, yoga, and running in her free time.