Catherine Read

Catherine is the Senior Director of Field & Campaign Strategy at Right to Start where she leads all aspects of the organization’s public engagement and mobilization which includes managing a growing team of state coalition managers . Right to Start is a national organization working to make entrepreneurship a civic priority. Catherine is an experienced organizational leader, advocate, campaigner and grassroots coalition builder who has worked at the state, federal and international level. She is co-founder of Points True North Consulting which works on a range of critical health, environmental and social justice issues building impactful coalitions, advancing policy change and devising strategic campaigns. In 2017, she launched and led an award-winning citizen-driven truth commission (the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture) – the first state-based accountability effort of its kind. Catherine started her career in Washington D.C. leading the offices of two international human rights organizations, Crisis Action & the Center for Victims of Torture. In 2011, Washingtonian magazine named her one of the 40-star lobbyists under 40 for her work on the campaign to ban torture. in 2021, Catherine was appointed to the NC Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She was part of Leadership North Carolina’s class xxviii.