Katie Walmsley

Katie Walmsley is the Chief Financial Officer of KIPP New Orleans Schools where she is accountable for an operating budget of over $110 million that supports over 900 employees across the school support center and 13 schools, serving over 6200 students. Under Katie’s leadership, KNOS has navigated both a budgetary contraction in the wake of pandemic-related financial uncertainty and then a large expansion in budgetary, procurement, accounting, and grant operations as the organization utilized federal relief funds. Katie’s teams have scaled their operations such that tens of millions of additional dollars could be invested in our staff and across broad initiatives for our students and schools while adhering to an increasingly complex compliance landscape. KNOS has enjoyed eight consecutive years of audit reports without deficiencies in internal controls or instances of non-compliance, the past six of which have been within Katie’s tenure.

Prior, Katie served as Finance and Administrative Officer of Teach For America-Greater New Orleans where she led efforts to fund operations by aligning the priorities of funders with TFA’s strategy, bringing over 1200 education leaders to Greater New Orleans. Earlier in her career, Ms. Walmsley joined the founding team of KODA, a web-based talent recruitment startup, raising seed capital, growing registered users to one hundred thousand, and spearheading online marketing, communications and product redesign. Earlier in her career, she held managerial positions in finance and operations at McMaster-Carr, a large supplier to commercial facilities worldwide, increasing productivity and managing quality and profitability. Katie began working in education to advance access to opportunity and equity in the city of New Orleans. Through her work on the Board of Directors of Propeller from 2011 to 2017, she oversaw the launch of their Accelerator programs and incubation of 100+ ventures tackling social and environmental disparities. From 2017 to 2023, she served on the Board of Directors of College Beyond, which helps New Orleans youth enroll and succeed in college. Ms. Walmsley was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Economics.