Kathy Booth is the Project Director for the Economic Mobility, Postsecondary, and Workforce Systems team at WestEd. As part of that team, Kathy Booth leads projects that help translate data into action. She helps map data across systems, including crosswalking K–12 and community college offerings, tracing adult education pathways from K–12 to community college, documenting education pathways to employment, and aligning data from educational institutions and social service agencies that support workforce development.
Booth’s current projects include leading community engagement for the development of California’s Career Education Master Plan, documenting how states are modernizing their linked data sets to strengthen equitable outcomes, measuring systems change efforts to broaden participation in STEM, and delivering technical assistance to community colleges on using labor market information to develop stronger pathways to living wages. Previously, she served as the Process Facilitator for the development of the California Cradle to Career Data System and supported the Guided Pathways movement.
For over five years, she was the project manager and architect for LaunchBoard, a suite of online data dashboards that make data on student progress, completion, employment, and earnings available to educators for the purpose of program improvement.
Booth also previously served as Executive Director of the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges. There, she helped lead activities such as developing the Career and Technical Education Outcomes Survey, expanding research on using high school data to inform placement into basic skills courses, investigating employment outcomes for short-term training, and documenting effective approaches for supporting students.
She has also worked on national projects, including the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, the Gates Foundation’s Completion by Design, and developmental education initiatives for Achieving the Dream.
Booth holds a BA in women’s studies, with a focus on integrating diversity into progressive politics, from Wesleyan University.