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AUTHOR, JOURNALIST, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF LEADERSLINK
Kathleen Koch is an award-winning journalist and author who for 18 years was a CNN Washington correspondent covering the White House, Pentagon and Capitol Hill as well as numerous disasters including 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. She currently writes op-eds for CNN.com, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report and other publications. Koch is an international speaker on disaster and resilience and founder of LeadersLink, the first nonprofit to harness and share elected officials’ disaster lessons learned to help other cities better prevent, prepare for and recover from similar crises.
Koch anchored two prize-winning documentaries on the recovery of her hometown, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and recorded its journey in a best-selling book, Rising from Katrina, which was named Best Nonfiction in the Southeast Region in the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards. She also won a 2006 Peabody award for her coverage of the hurricane.
Koch is chair of Howard County, Maryland’s Community Organizations Active in Disaster, a network of more than 60 organizations working to speed and coordinate crisis preparation and recovery activity in the region.
Koch was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of Dijon.