Katherine Polkinghorne

South Africa

MSc Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment

St Edmund Hall- Mitchell Scholarship

Funding: Louis Dreyfus-Weidenfeld and Hoffmann

Katherine works as an ESG Consultant for IBIS, a leading emerging market sustainability consultancy. Previously, she worked as a Project Officer in Rhino Camp, Northern Uganda, for the Gulu Agricultural Development Company, one of Africa’s leading organic cotton and sesame exporters. Katie helped spearhead the Development Initiative for Northern Uganda with the UN Capital Development Fund and Care International as well as a multi-million Euro SDG Partnership project with the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. This includes developing organic agricultural value chains for 25,000 smallholder farmers (refugees, internally displaced people and host communities) to secure access to the international markets. During her time at university, Katie ran Tutors4Tomorrow, a non-profit academic tutoring and leadership programme for underprivileged students in Cape Town. She is committed to working in international development with a focus on environmental sustainability, climate-smart agriculture, wildlife conservation and gender empowerment. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) in Economics from the University of Cape Town.