ABOUT KATY
B
orn and raised in Portland, OR, Katy’s parents divorced when she was 10. Her father dated and re-married, and her mother repartnered with a woman. Katy experienced both maternal and paternal love but also the family breakup that divorce brings about. She doesn’t consider her mother’s partner to be her mother, but she does consider her to be a friend.
Katy graduated from St. Olaf College with a bachelor’s in Political Science and Asian Studies. Upon graduation, she married Ryan and they spent their first year of marriage in Taiwan where Katy completed a Fulbright scholarship. They then moved to Colorado where Katy served as the Assistant Director for Chinese Children Adoption International.
Ryan became a full-time pastor and upon the birth of their first child McKayla, Katy became a full-time stay-at-home mom. Miriam and Joshua arrived soon after, followed by the adoption of Benjamin from China.
Throughout their marriage, Katy has been involved in church small groups, worship teams, women’s ministry, hospital and end-of-life ministry, individual counseling, pre-marriage counseling, and crisis counseling. From her college days to current church life, Katy has been deeply involved with children and teens. She is currently directing her church’s youth ministry.
In 2012 Katy began an anonymous blog detailing why marriage is a matter of justice for children. In 2014 she was “outed” by a gay blogger and forced to write under her own name. In a “what the enemy means for evil” turn of events, her platform increased a hundredfold with invitations to speak at the UN, present to foreign parliaments, and submit amicus briefs to the United StateSupreme Court.
Katy began working with CanaVox in 2014 which equips participants to study marriage, family, and sexuality via materials based on natural law, social science, and practical wisdom. Katy helped design the teen edition of CanaVox, authoring several aspects of their curriculum related to friendship, marriage, sexuality, identity, pornography, and abortion.
The need for a formal organization advocating on behalf of children in family matters became painfully clear. Thus in 2018 she founded Them Before Us with the aim of centering the child in every conversation about marriage and family.
In 2021, along with her co-author Stacy Manning, Katy published Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement. In 2023, the two co-authored their philosophy of worldview transmission in their parenting salvo, Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City.
Katy’s time is now spent connecting with her four busy teenagers, cheering on Ryan who is now a Navy chaplain, and servings as the President of Them Before Us, advancing the rights and well-being of children across the globe through articles, interviews, advocacy, speaking, and projects. She serves on the advisory board for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship and frequently collaborates with organizations committed to human flourishing such as Alliance Defending Freedom, Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation, and the Colson Center.
