Katie Beckmann

Dr. Katie Beckmann is the Children and Families director at The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. She leads the Foundation’s work to ensure that mothers, expectant parents, and young children have the support they need to be healthy and thrive.

The Children and Families initiative strives to advance practices, policies, and systems that support health, well-being, early learning, and economic opportunity, funding nationally with targeted investments in California, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Prior to joining the Foundation in 2016 as a Program Officer leading the children’s health strategy, Dr. Beckmann served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Early Childhood Health in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services where she focused on disease prevention and health promotion across Head Start, child care, Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge, and Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting programs.

Dr. Beckmann received a doctorate in developmental psychology with distinction at Columbia University where her research focused on social and environmental risk factors leading to toxic stress during pregnancy and cognitive outcomes in preschoolers. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and a Masters in Public Health in health policy and administration at Yale University.