Katherine McDonald

Katherine is a Senior Consultant with Stratagem and is a founder member of the firm. She advises some of Stratagem’s longest-term clients and has provided project management to a range of organisations working in complex legislative and regulatory environments. She has also led higher-profile campaigns co-ordinating policy development, lobbying and public relations. She has developed and delivered a comprehensive and popular training programme on lobbying, campaigning and understanding government in Northern Ireland.

Katherine worked for the Labour Party based at Westminster for four years. After one year with Tony Blair MP, she worked as research and press assistant to Mo Mowlam MP, then Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. She was seconded to Labour’s general election campaign headquarters, where she worked as part of the team planning the Labour leader’s election tour. She returned to Northern Ireland in 1997 as press and public relations officer for The Northern Ireland Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NIACRO).

Katherine studied Modern Languages at St. John’s College, Oxford, going on to complete a Masters degree at the University of Ulster in Journalism Studies, where she examined the potential of the Internet as a tool to increase public engagement with the Northern Ireland Assembly. She continued in education completing a Certificate in Management with the Open University and in 2006 spent two months at the University of California, Berkeley taking a course in Politics, Ethics and Leadership at the School of Political Science. She has studied the American lobbying system in Washington and completed the Belfast Common Purpose Navigator Programme. She has been a board member of the Ulster People's College since 2000.