Christina Pate (she/her) serves as the Deputy Director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Center to Improve Social & Emotional Learning and School Safety and Director of the Office of the California Surgeon General’s Statewide Trauma Informed Professional Learning. She also leads WestEd’s Safe and Supportive Learning Environments body of work.
Pate supports clients in developing work that fosters personal and collective well-being, centers equity, promotes trauma-informed practice and resilience, and improves cross-sector collaboration to improve outcomes for individuals, organizations, and systems.
With over twenty years of experience, Pate brings diverse expertise in strategic planning, professional learning and workforce development, systems thinking, social-emotional development and mental health, leadership and collaboration, and organizational climate and culture. She has led innovative and successful efforts to strengthen personal and organizational learning, development, and transformation. An accomplished strategist, developer, coach, facilitator, author, and public speaker, Pate supports people and organizations to transform from the inside out.
Pate previously served as the Director of the Equity Accelerator funded by the Bechtel Family Foundation, the Implementation/Technical Assistance Lead for the National Institute of Justice’s Comprehensive School Safety Initiative in Atlanta Public Schools, and the Project Director and T.A. Liaison for SAMHSA’s Project AWARE at the Now is the Time TA Center.
Pate received a BA in psychology, MEd in counseling psychology, and a MA and PhD in school psychology. She completed postdoctoral clinical residency training at the University of Missouri and was a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow in Child Mental Health Services & Service Systems Research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She was also an affiliate researcher with the Johns Hopkins Systems Institute (School of Engineering).