Dr. Katie Wildman is the founder and Principal of The Global Education Firm — a counselor by education, a strategist by experience, a coach in training, and an adventurer by nature. She grew up in a farming community where relationships were the foundation of everything — neighbors showed up for neighbors, hard work was shared, and the bonds between people mattered more than anything else. Those roots shaped everything she has built since. From the American Midwest she has built a life of purposeful wandering — sailing nine voyages with Semester at Sea, a licensed sailor who loves the thrill of racing, a follower of hydroplane racing, and educational and organizational experiences spanning nearly half the world's countries.

 

She has lived and worked as a full-time expat — building community, leading institutions, and raising her child across cultures and time zones — and that lived experience informs everything she brings to her clients and partners. She has served at the highest levels of academic and organizational leadership across institutions of every size, type, and cultural context — public research universities, private colleges, international branch campuses, and nonprofit organizations — as an inaugural Vice Chancellor, a dean, a researcher, a teacher, and a tireless advocate.

 

She understands how institutions actually work from the inside: how decisions get made, where strategies stall, what cultures need to heal, and how to build systems that serve the people inside them. She is a licensed wedding officiant who has stood alongside people at life's most sacred and celebratory moments — and that calling reflects something true about who she is: someone who shows up fully, in the joy and in the hard seasons both. She is a single mother who chose parenthood on her own terms, building a transracial family with intention, humor, and an enormous amount of love — her child took her first steps on a ship, cheered on by an entire seafaring community, which says everything about the life they have built together.

 

She has navigated educational environments from both sides — as a dean who has championed thousands of students through their highest achievements and most persistent challenges, and as a parent who understands firsthand what families need when they are advocating for a child in systems that weren't always built with them in mind. She knows the terrain from the inside out, and she brings that dual perspective to every student, family, and organization she works with.

 

She is a striver for vibrant, mindful living — someone who believes that complexity and joy are not opposites, that transitions can be navigated with both rigor and grace, and that the most meaningful work happens when people are truly seen. She started The Global Education Firm in 2017 because she believed the world needed a different kind of firm — one built not on templates, but on genuine human connection, practical experience, scholarly understanding, global perspective, and the conviction that the right people working alongside you can help you build something that is entirely, authentically yours.