Rewiring the nervous system of democracy
through stories, strategy and systems change.

Kate Woodsome is a strategic advisor, producer and leader uncovering the connections between mental health and democracy. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Georgetown University scholar who has studied trauma for decades, Kate examines how our social, political and information systems are keeping people in states of fight, flight, freeze and appease. She uses narrative repair, resilience training and a systems change framework co-developed with Georgetown to help people disrupt these cycles of harm and build intergenerational wellbeing.

Interviewing Bessel Van Der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score.

Covering the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack.

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    Strategy, communications and discernment tools to help people and organizations transform complex challenges into opportunities for growth, wellbeing and lasting impact.

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  • Media & Momentum

    Media coverage and public appearances that amplify a simple truth: How we feel shapes how we live, vote, relate and lead.

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  • Video Production

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Values-driven, trauma-informed work can resonate, restore trust and create impact.

  • 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for The Washington Post’s coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection.

  • “Throughout the long, cold, bleak day and night [of Jan. 6, 2021], they bore witness. And with their words, their photographs, their video, they conveyed to millions of Post readers around the country and around the world the history that was unfolding in the nation’s capital.”

  • 2021 Murrow Award for ‘Please Rise,” about how the NFL prioritized profit over true patriotism by banning National Anthem protests.

  • Top honors for multimedia explainers short docs from 2019-2022.

  • "Kate, I applaud your principled and values-based approach to going upstream to uncover and describe the systemic and structural issues that we must address to achieve greater health and wellbeing for the greatest number of people. Thank you for your grit and courage. When I read your work, I am taken back to Margaret Mead who said, 'Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed citizens to change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.' Thank you."

    Dr. Kathleen M. Pike, CEO, One Mind

  • "Kate Woodsome was surrounded by about ten rioters at the Capitol steps... She stayed calm, stayed put, and continued to do her job..."

    Martin Baron, Former Washington Post executive editor and author of “Collision of Power”

  • "Few journalists are covering mental health issues with the kind of deep insight and sourcing as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kate Woodsome. I had the good fortune to work with her for years at Post Opinions covering stories of real human trauma, including my own."

    Jason Rezaian, Director, Washington Post Press Freedom Initiatives

  • “Recently I heard you on 1A with Jenn White. Thank you. Your compassion, generosity of spirit, and courage gives me hope which is so hard to find these days...Your work to nurture democracy by attending to our collective mental health speaks so powerfully to me. With so many of our current students struggling with anxiety and depression, you speak a quiet but undeniable truth, and you suggest a positive path of transformation.”

    Beth Ingle, Rock Valley College, Illinois

  • "As is always the case, Kate Woodsome’s writing on how we do (or do not) take care of one another’s mental health should come with a trigger warning along the lines of: ‘Complacent reading not available here.’ Engagement is ok; action is better; raising all our expectations is best. Ask not whether you’re already doing a darn good job. Ask what you need to double-down on and what you ought to stop doing. Get accountable. Thanks, Kate Woodsome for your relentlessness.”

    Joe Feldman, Founder, CoverMyMentalHealth.Org, Illinois

  • “I certainly will try to do my part in a more constructive way by reaching out to my Congressmen in hopes for the truth. I’m carrying a lot of anger , because I love my country and I want to see it working more towards Democracy by following the Constitution. After hearing this conversation I will take back my power, and try to be more open minded to others views. I will also be more gentle with myself in the process. Thank you for this very meaningful conversation.”

    Jane Good, Maine

  • “I am encouraged, inspired, and weirdly, reassured by this reporting. You put your body and your mind on the line to demonstrate healing from trauma, as you note. And this ends up being exposure therapy in action, too, for your viewers … especially those of us safely tucked away in blue corners of the northeastern part of the United States. Thank you for this valiant use of privilege.”

    Elle, “Northeastern United States”

  • “How can an individual working on their own healing influence communal healing and well-being through the library, a community garden and public mosaic art in a small southern Maine town? Never realized such a clear way of framing what I’ve been working on for years until listening to you here, Kate. Thank you.”

    Brigit McCallum, Maine

  • "Kate... it is only the Master Weaver that is able to weave with invisible thread. This invisible thread is the light and spark each of us were born with and as we grow and create more walls around ourselves and our lives, we loose the connections that should carry us through life.Through "your words and your voice", you permit us to shine "

    Bahareh Amidi Shargi, Washington, DC

More about Kate

Kate has spent 20 years navigating complex information environments in post-war, authoritarian and declining democracies. She began her career as a journalist reporting in Cuba, post-genocide Cambodia and Hong Kong before managing radio and television programs for Voice of America and Al Jazeera English, amplifying under-reported stories.

At The Washington Post, she founded a film production unit, pioneered a mental health column and reported on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Kate also has been recognized with the Ben Bradlee Award for Courage in Journalism, an Edward R. Murrow Award and honors from the White House News Photographers Association.

In Dec. 2023, she left The Post, no longer willing to normalize the burnout, trauma and moral injury pervasive in the industry. Now a visiting affiliate scholar at Georgetown University, Kate is collaborating with global trauma experts to nurture systems that heal, not harm. She’s independently building The Invisible Threads Lab — an incubator for research, storytelling and public empowerment that explores how personal and collective wellbeing are shaped by the stories we embody and the systems we live in. Free from traditional media pressures, the Lab will create space to imagine new ways of informing, connecting and transforming the conditions that keep people isolated or unwell.

Interviewing garment factory workers in Cambodia. Source: Moneaksekar Khmer, 2003