 |
Descendant of coal miners, fur trappers, ice fishermen and schoolteachers from Pennsylvania, Katie McKalip grew up with a front row seat to the politicking of Washington, D.C., thanks to her military upbringing. After college in Virginia, she landed in western Montana, where she spends a lot of time outdoors and engages in policy making from a distance.
Katie joined the BHA team following a seven-year stint with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, where she led the TRCP’s media outreach and other communications work. She also helped realize founder Jim Range’s vision of the TRCP as an influencer of sportsmen-driven conservation policy and a center point in the outdoors and hunting and angling constituencies. She is actively involved with the boards of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, where she directed communications before moving to the TRCP, and Conservation Hawks, which levies sportsmen’s political muscle to advance effective approaches to climate change.
She has an M.S. from the University of Montana and a B.A. from The College of William & Mary. For her master’s thesis, she wrote a manuscript on the history of mining – camps, communities and colorful characters – in the area now known as Rocky Mountain National Park.
Married to a Montanan who’s hunted since he was 12, Katie especially enjoys upland hunting with good friends and great dogs, cross country skiing Montana’s hills and river bottoms, and summertime paddles in sun dappled mountain streams, ideally with her two kids in tow.
About Caitlin Thompson