As part of WestEd’s Postsecondary Pathways and Career Mobility 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 currently serves as the Process Facilitator for developing the California Cradle-to-Career Data System. She also serves as Associate Director for the California Guided Pathways project and conducts research with the Community College Research Center on how colleges have integrated career and transfer partnerships into pathways reforms.
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.
Booth 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.
She received a BA in women’s studies, with a focus on integrating diversity into progressive politics, from Wesleyan University.