She graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Management Science and went on to do a PhD in operational research at the University of Kent. Kathy was the co-chair of the UK simulation study group from 2006-2011 organising national and international events. She has published several papers in operational research and was co-editor of the book Conceptual modelling for discrete event simulation. In 2009 she was awarded the KD Tocher Medal by the OR Society for the best simulation paper published in the Journal of Simulation over the period 2007-8. In 2011 Kathy took a career break for family reasons and in 2014 was awarded the Daphne Jackson Fellowship to enable her to undertake new research in the field of simulation modelling.