Kate Hess Pace

Kate Hess Pace is the founder and executive director of Hoosier Action, a member-led organization building civic and political power across Indiana's small towns and rural communities. Since founding Hoosier Action in 2017, she has worked alongside Hoosiers to develop local leaders, strengthen community institutions, and organize campaigns that improve the lives of working families. For more than twenty years, Kate has organized communities excluded from public decision-making. Before returning home to Indiana, she worked as a faith-based organizer with ISAIAH in Minnesota on predatory lending, foreclosure defense, and economic justice. Her family's roots in Indiana stretch back for generations. Kate's current work focuses on rebuilding civic life in an age of institutional decline, polarization, and distrust. She believes the future of democracy will be determined not only in elections and legislatures, but by whether ordinary people can rebuild the relationships and institutions that allow communities to govern themselves.