Kato is a human geographer and urbanist. She works as an action researcher and advisor at DRIFT, the Dutch Research Institute For Transitions. DRIFT was established in 2004 at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, where it is currently operating as a social enterprise. At DRIFT, Kato develops and shares transformative knowledge to support people, cities, sectors and organisations to engage proactively with sustainability transitions and transition governance. She is specifically interested in how to make transitions land well in the built environment.
A few examples of her current projects are the Connecting Nature project in which she is supporting cities with the implementation and scaling of nature-based solutions through co-production and reflexive monitoring. Kato is also coaching innovative food entrepreneurs in the Voedselfamilie Academie to take the next step towards realizing their transformative business models. Furthermore, she’s part of a consortium designing a governance driven approach for Luxemburg to become carbon neutral by 2050.