Katie Lynch

Katie Lynch (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) is a researcher, engineer, and artist, passionate about building Indigenous-led systems of care. She is currently a Ph.D. Student in Health Infrastructures & Learning Systems at the University of Michigan Medical School and a Graduate Research Assistant with the Native Nourishment Network. With experience across federal, non-profit, and corporate policy spaces, Katie brings a multidisciplinary and relational lens to her work. She studies Indigenous conceptualizations of learning health systems and food sovereignty, with particular interests in place-based healing and radical hope as a form of Neshnabè futurism. Her research centers relationality and aims to move science and scholarship towards collective liberation. Outside of academics, Katie is the Chair of the Youth Advisory Board for the Center for Native American Youth at The Aspen Institute, where she advocates for the inclusion of Native youth voices in governance and decision-making. In the future, Katie hopes to pursue a career at the intersection of academia and policy focused on Indigenous food system restoration as a public health mechanism. She finds strength in community, collectivity, and the power of Indigenous people to exist in spaces designed to resist them.