Katherine Ferry, B.A.
Project Manager, California Reducing Disparities Project (CRDP) and Accountability, Coordination and Telehealth in the Valley to Achieve Transformation and Equity (ACTIVATE)
Since 2013, Katherine has contributed to multiple health equity initiatives. She served as Acting Behavioral Health Director for Sonoma County Indian Health Project, Inc., a Tribal health center/FQHC lookalike. In this role, she learned the critical importance of validating culture-based, community-defined practices and how to integrate these practices in a clinic setting. Katherine’s other experiences include working as Director of Community Engagement for NAMI California and as system-level consumer advocate and program supervisor in the County of Placer and County of Sacramento Behavioral Health Departments. She was a member of the Cultural and Linguistic Competence Committee of the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (MHSOAC) from 2015-2016, and Co-Chair of the Placer County Systems of Care Cultural and Linguistic Competence Committee in 2019.
Katherine is bilingual in Spanish and studied at the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Spain. After graduating from UC Davis with bachelor’s degrees in Linguistics and Spanish, Katherine served as a volunteer teacher of English in rural Ziquítaro, Michoácan, México. As a graduate student in Linguistics at San Francisco State University, Katherine participated in a community language archive project in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, México, studying traditional storytelling in a Zapotec language. Katherine is passionate about the intersection of language and health, particularly as it relates to culturally and linguistically appropriate care for speakers of Spanish and Indigenous languages.
Katherine’s desire to serve communities comes from her lived experience of receiving health services as a woman with disabilities. She loves to mentor others in utilizing their unique experiences to serve their communities and promote health systems transformation.
She lives and works on the ancestral homeland of the Nisenan and Miwok peoples.
