Christina Pate is a Senior Program Associate on WestEd’s Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities team. She directs WestEd’s Safe and Supportive Learning Environments and the Oregon Department of Education and Maryland State Department of Education’s professional learning projects.
Pate uses a collaborative approach to co-design innovative improvement strategies and inclusive workplaces where individuals and teams can excel, fueled by learning, well-being, engagement, and a strong sense of belonging. She leads, designs, and scales transformative initiatives in complex organizations with a focus on human-centered leadership, engagement, and inclusive cultures. By partnering with leaders and cross-functional teams, Pate helps navigate complexity and build high-performing, healthy teams through developing mindsets, practices, and systems that support individual and organizational development.
With over twenty years of experience, Pate brings expertise in strategic planning, learning & development, systems thinking, participatory design, social-emotional development and mental health, leadership and collaboration, change management, and organizational culture.
Pate previously served as Deputy Director of the Center to Improve Social & Emotional Learning and School Safety; Director of the Equity Accelerator, Implementation Lead for the NIJ CSSI Initiative; Project Director for SAMHSA’s Project AWARE-Now is the Time TA Center; and Director of the California Surgeon General’s Safe Spaces.
Pate holds an MEd in Counseling and a PhD in Psychology. She completed her clinical postdoctoral residency at the University of Missouri. Pate was a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and an affiliate researcher with the Johns Hopkins Systems Institute (School of Engineering).