Kate has considerable lived experience of dementia, growing up with her grandfather with dementia and in more recent years living with and caring for her mother throughout the 10₊  years of her dementia journey. She began her career as a social worker in 1977 and has many years of experience in practice, management and service development of health and social care for older people and in particular people with dementia.  She was the executive director of the West Midlands Dementia Services Development Centre for five years.  Kate taught at Staffordshire University as a senior lecturer in Social Work before moving to the Association for Dementia Studies at the University of Worcester  where she led on the development of admiral nurses in the West Midlands but also enjoyed delivering the extensive training and education programmes developed at the Association over the 9 years she worked there.