Katherine (Kate) G. Windsor, Ed.D., is the 12th head of the 180-year-old Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut. Since her tenure began in 2008, Porter’s has grown to 347 students —two-thirds boarding and one-third day students — representing 24 states and 31 countries. At Porter’s, Dr. Windsor is driven to uphold its mission to develop women as leaders who will shape a changing world. Her leadership of an all-girls school is driven by how girls learn, how girls think and why identity matters. Dr. Windsor believes it is vital to engage in the contributions of all community members, as witnessed by curriculum, infrastructure and programming.
Kate began her career as a head of school more than 25 years ago. She is the former head at The Sage School (Foxboro, Massachusetts) and the former director of residential life at Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland. A career educator, she has served as a lecturer for the Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and as an executive committee member and instructor at Penn GSE’s Independent School Teaching Residency (ISTR) master’s program. Also known as the Penn Fellows Program, ISTR aims to bring new talent to the teaching profession and to increase the diversity of master-trained educators who work in independent schools.
Windsor believes that each school year is an opportunity for Porter’s to reinvent itself with the arrival of new students, faculty, employees and community members. With board support and the leadership team, Porter’s actively strives to be an environment where all community members feel seen, heard and valued.
Windsor earned her Doctor of Education in organizational and educational leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a former Klingenstein Visiting Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University. Windsor earned her Master of Arts at the College of Notre Dame and her bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester. A Maryland native, Dr. Windsor graduated from the Friends School of Baltimore (FSB), where she received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2015 and was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame for basketball in 2010. She also serves as a member of the school’s head advisory committee.
Internationally recognized for her scholarship, vision and expertise in girls’ education, leadership and development, Dr. Windsor serves as the board chair for the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. She is a past board member of several other organizations, including the Connecticut Association of Independent Schools, Parents League of New York, Park School (Massachusetts), Sandy Spring Friends School (Maryland) and SPHERE Consortium of Eastern Connecticut. Windsor is the recent past commissioner of the Founders League Athletic Conference (Connecticut), a past commission member of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) and an exemplary school leader for the NEASC Student Agency Collaborative Capstone Project.
Windsor is a published, sought-after guest speaker and has presented at several conferences on issues such as girls and women in leadership, becoming an anti-racist academic institution, equity and justice in independent school advancement, and trauma-informed educational practices. She has received several awards over the past 20 years, most recently the Jeff Shields 2022 Award for Innovation and Excellence in Business Practices and the Commission on Independent Schools NEASC 2022 Service Award.
Dr. Windsor lives on the Miss Porter’s School campus with her husband, Dr. Jonas Katkavich. She is the proud mother of two sons: Jack, who serves as the head of sports programming and nonfiction at Propagate Content, and Mac, who, like his brother, is a Wesleyan University alum. Both are also graduates of boarding school.