Bio
Kathryn began her career working at a college counseling center. Students would enter counseling because of anxiety, depression or trauma, but she quickly noticed that a lot of the issues students were struggling with stemmed from the shame and stigma surrounding sexuality. A young man accused of rape, crying, swore he didn’t know an intoxicated person could not consent to sex. A new student skipping classes because peers were calling her a slut on social media. A twenty-something devastated because she had contracted an incurable STI. A freshman, depressed, thinking all she had to offer new friends was her beauty and sex appeal.
The hardships these students and others faced inspired Kathryn to combat the shame and stigma surrounding sexuality and fight to improve sex education. She is driven by the knowledge that comprehensive sex education, one that views sex as normal and healthy, will help to improve the quality of young people’s lives in countless ways.
Kathryn started tackling these issues beyond her therapy office as a professor, teaching Tweens & Teens at Temple University. Currently she is an adjunct professor at Hunter College. She has taught there since 2010 and developed curriculum for courses such as Human Sexuality, The Psychology of Women, and Abnormal Psychology.
In addition to serving as President of the American Psychological Association's Society of Media Psychology and Technology, she is the Co-Editor of their magazine, The Amplifier. Kathryn also serves as a Consulting Editor to the Psychology of Popular Media Culture Journal and writes a blog for Psychology Today, called The New Teen Age.
As a public educator, Kathryn often appears in the media, talking about current events and research surrounding adolescent sexuality. She was trained by the prestigious Progressive Women’s Voice’s program and is a SheSource Expert.
Kathryn is also passionate about providing mental health support to individuals who have been impacted by natural disasters. She is an active volunteer with The American Red Cross and deployed to rural Louisiana during the 2016 flood, areas of the South impacted by Hurricane Harvey and most recently, North Carolina after the devastation of Hurricane Florence.
Kathryn received her B.A. from the University of Tampa and holds an M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Temple University.