Katherine Turner (she/her) is an accomplished executive leader and trusted partner to nonprofit board members, senior leaders, and teams navigating complex organizational transitions. Known for her strategic vision, insight, active listening, deep empathy, and incisive execution, Katherine skillfully guides organizations through leadership and systems changes, providing critical board and team development and facilitating structural realignment so that organizations emerge from transition periods more aligned, effective, and future ready. Her approach is built on transparency, collaboration, trust, and forward momentum, ensuring continuity of mission while creating greater resilience and impact.
Katherine brings a rare combination of extensive experience as an insightful executive leadership coach, adept organizational transformation advisor, motivational facilitator, trainer, and speaker, and committed social change agent. She creates the conditions for positive transformation at every level of an organization. Katherine collaborates with boards and leadership teams to identify and leverage organizational strengths, assess and prioritize challenges to address, provide steadfast reassurance to staff, donors, and partners, increase organizational stability, and chart a clear path forward. Katherine is passionate about helping leaders and organizations align their vision, mission, values, systems, strategies, and culture to create inclusive, high-performing teams and drive sustainable social impact.
Katherine has stood in nonprofit leaders’ shoes, and yet as a nonprofit founder, board chair, and senior leader, business owner, strategic advisor, and adjunct professor who has worked in diverse sectors, she understands and approaches organizational challenges from various vantage points. As a systems thinker, she sees the big picture, interconnected parts, and levers for change. Through direct services work early in her career, she developed deep familiarity with the daily realities that community members face. Drawing on multisectoral leadership experience, evidence, and best practices, she develops innovative yet practical solutions and ensures that decisions are grounded in practical realities as well as strategic vision.
Katherine’s intercultural acumen is grounded in her lived experience of adapting to culturally-different U.S. regions and countries as she moved frequently during her early years. Her migratory and international upbringing formed her global citizen identity, values, and worldview of our interconnectedness and responsibility for each other’s wellbeing across human-imposed borders. She speaks English, French, and Dutch and has lived and worked in more than 50 countries spanning five continents. This global lens enables her to lead diverse teams with cultural humility and support organizations serving multicultural communities.
Before founding Global Citizen, LLC in 2011, Katherine held senior leadership roles at the Durham County Department of Public Health and Ipas, an international nongovernmental organization. She began her career as a Peace Corps Volunteer and National Trainer in Togo, West Africa, an experience that shaped her lifelong commitment to service, intercultural collaboration, and systems-level change.
Katherine also serves as an Adjunct Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, teaching graduate courses on leadership, systems and design thinking, global health equity, and intercultural competence. She is the author of numerous publications, including the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Intercultural Competence in Leadership chapter in Leadership in Practice: Essentials for Public Health and Healthcare Leaders, a textbook taught in universities worldwide.
Katherine earned a B.A. in Psychology and Certificate in Women’s Studies, graduated with honors, and earned a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University. She holds a Master of Public Health degree from the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. She is an alumna of How Women Lead’s Women Leaders for the World Fellowship Program for women driving global social impact.
Board and senior leadership teams consistently describe Katherine as “a collaborative, insightful, and results-driven leader” who “delivers far beyond expectations.” One colleague noted that “her skills in facilitating a group of passionate and opinionated leaders were truly impressive.” Another described her as “a trusted partner in transition” who “provides calm, consistent leadership that enables organizations to move from instability to resilience with renewed purpose and lasting impact.”
LinkedIn: Katherine Turner