Kathleen T. Harris holds a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and a JD from Loyola Law School Los Angeles. She served as the founding Associate Director of the University Honors Program at the University of California, Riverside. At the University of Georgia, she managed the Foundation Fellows Program; she expanded both the number of fellowships awarded and the geographic and intellectual reach of the programs and opportunities she developed for the fellows. In 1998 Foundation Fellows were the first UGA students to travel and study in Tanzania, thanks to a pilot project co-created by Harris and African Studies Institute Director Lioba Moshi. A three-time Fulbright awardee, she established Loyola Marymount University’s first office dedicated to supporting national and international scholarship applicants. While at LMU she also successfully competed for funding under the University of Southern California’s Irvine Foundation-funded Campus Diversity Initiative.

Apart from her professional record, Harris has a consistent record of civic engagement. While residing in Riverside, she was appointed to the Human Relations Commission by the city council, with assignments on the Housing and Homeless and Law Enforcement Review Committees. She is a founding member of the Regaining Access Project, a legal aid nonprofit that helps rehabilitated offenders.

She currently has a private practice advising college and graduate school bound students. She is focused on educational programs and coordinates fundraising for the Foundation.