Katherine Ratledge, Program Manager for the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility
As a child growing up in Virginia, Katherine Ratledge remembers always being outside. That was the root of her deep connection with nature, which has never left.
“My favorite thing is to be outside. I love to watch birds, to be in the mountains, to smell things …”
That love of nature has surfaced throughout Ratledge’s academic and professional life. An undergraduate history major with a Spanish minor, she discovered a passion for teaching through English as a Second Language instruction and as a ski instructor. As a self-proclaimed history nerd, Ratledge went on to teach high school AP history and government classes for nine years, often bringing an environmental lens into the classroom.
“I really wanted students to understand how much our natural resources have an influence, not only on our cultural history, but also on our wealth as a nation, as a society, and on our world.”
She helped students see how major moments in American history were often connected to weather events, from the Dust Bowl to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and Hurricane Katrina. “These shifted the economy, migration and the way people live.”
The desire to broaden that perspective eventually led Ratledge into higher education. Her master's degree in sustainable development and Latin American studies at New York University deepened her understanding of the connections between environmental, economic and social systems, including research focused on clean energy in Brazil.
Changing the message
Ratledge helped launch Energy Smart Colorado, a residential energy-efficiency program designed to help homeowners reduce energy use. A small team built the program from the ground up, securing funding, developing workforce training and engaging homeowners. The experience taught her a lesson she didn’t expect.
Despite incentives and growing evidence of climate challenges, it was often difficult to persuade people to make changes. “I suddenly realized that it’s not that people don’t care—it’s just that there are so many other priorities demanding our attention first,” she said.
Becoming a working mother of three and a homeowner transformed her perspective. “The shift for me was recognizing where people are at and helping them make the connection to whatever it is that’s impactful for them.”
That realization changed how she thought about sustainability work. “It helped me understand that we were saying the wrong things, that we had to change our messaging,” she explained. “It’s not about people not caring. It’s about equipping them with the right tools.” For Ratledge, two of those tools are business and something that sometimes feels in short supply: hope.
“Leeds has always led as a school in seeing business as a force for good. When you think about restructuring society or a changed world from AI and climate change, that’s where the business community can be extraordinary.”
—Katherine Ratledge, Program Manager for CESR
Business as a force for good
As program manager for the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility since 2023, Ratledge understands that “things have to make business sense for people to do them.” She recognized an important opportunity when Breakthrough Energy approached CU Boulder about joining its University Climate Ventures network. CU Boulder is one of a handful of schools globally in the initiative.
Launched in 2025, Boulder Climate Ventures brings together CESR, the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and the College of Engineering and Applied Science to help move climate innovations from research labs into the marketplace. In its second year, with renewed funding from Breakthrough Energy, this fall will bring new Executive-in-Residence Alice Havill of Fractal Climate; a fall seminar series that can be taken as a for-credit class; and the spring Clean Tech Venture Discovery course, also for credit.
“Boulder is a desirable location not just to live but also a great place for research and innovation, thanks to university and national labs. There is a great clean tech ecosystem as well as a robust startup culture here,” Ratledge explained.
“Leeds has always led as a school in seeing business as a force for good,” she added. “When you think about restructuring society or a changed world from AI and climate change, that’s where the business community can be extraordinary.”
Policy makers and scientists alone won’t move the needle, she said. “It’s the business community that can be a catalyst on how to move forward.” As we enter what Ratledge believes is a fifth industrial revolution, business will play a central role in turning innovation into real-world impact.
Restoring faith in the human spirit
For Ratledge, her favorite part of the job is the people: “Working with, talking to, hanging out with and mentoring students.”
“I always knew I wanted to do something that had some sort of impact. I wanted to work with people, but I’m a 5,000-foot person, rather than a 30,000-foot person.”
When it comes to hope, Ratledge doesn’t call herself an eternal optimist. She acknowledges today’s realities while resisting what she calls the “doom loop” of negative news and social media. That overlooks “that humans are extraordinarily ingenious and resilient,” as history has repeatedly shown us.
“I recognize that these students are truly going to be tomorrow’s leaders of Colorado and beyond. I feel very much like I can make these relationships with them and help them on their journey, and then they will go on to those 30,000-foot impacts.”
If we pair hopelessness with apathy, she argues, the result is a blight on the human spirit. The antidote? Community. Everything that CESR does is underscored by connection. Ratledge saw it firsthand last year, for example, during a Sustainability Scholars “Colorado by Bus” trip.
“That was so energizing for students, and that’s exactly what they saw on the trip—community. Three little towns with outsize impact.”
For Ratledge, connecting those dots means showing that business as a force for good isn't abstract or out of reach. At its best, it’s simply what comes naturally.