Kate McCollum is a Senior Director at the Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL), a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing child poverty in Dallas by half within 20 years.

In her role, Kate leads Trust Her, the programmatic arm of CPAL’s reproductive and maternal health strategy. Trust Her works to optimize systems throughout a woman’s entire healthcare journey, from ensuring women can access their preferred method of contraception without barriers—allowing them to decide if and when they want to start a family—to building resources and clinical support for parents during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, so families are set up to be healthy, thriving, and stable.

Before joining CPAL, Kate worked with the Take Control Initiative, a contraceptive access project in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that reduced teen pregnancy rates by over 50% by removing barriers to birth control. She has extensive experience in women’s health and contraceptive access projects, complemented by research and graduate-level study in reproductive justice.

Kate earned a bachelor’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from Saint Louis University, where her research focused on bias and reproductive coercion in the healthcare industry. She also received a master’s degree in International Development and Gender, with a concentration in reproductive health, from the London School of Economics and Political Science.