Katherine Oaks, an attorney and lifelong advocate for ecological justice, directs the Healthy Soils Law Project and the Soil Stories Survey at Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment. She most recently hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she worked for three years as a public defender with the Defender Association of Philadelphia, representing those most harmed by unjust systems. Katherine received her law degree from Villanova Law School and her Bachelor of Science in Sociology from Saint Joseph’s University. Ecological systems thinking shaped Katherine’s approach as a criminal defense lawyer and is central to her vision as an environmental lawyer – to inform law and policy by incorporating local knowledge, needs, and perspectives.