Catherine is the Project Director for North Carolina Essentials for Childhood Initiative for the NC Division of Public Health. Essentials for Childhood is part of a comprehensive child abuse and neglect prevention effort across seven states supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other funders. In this role, she facilitates public efforts for the integration of child maltreatment prevention into existing public programming and works in collaboration with public and private partners for the implementation of recommendations from the NC Institute of Medicine Task Force on Essentials for Childhood and related strategies from the North Carolina Early Childhood Action Plan.
Prior to joining the NC Division of Public Health, Catherine was a social work educator, teaching child welfare and practice courses and directing field education. Over the past 30 years she has provided public and private child welfare services as direct practice social worker, clinician, supervisor, and administrator. She received a Master of Social Work degree from East Carolina University.