Katie Hirasaki grew up throughout the United States and has spent the last ten years in Colorado. She has focused her education and career on migration, conflict, and community led development, and graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with bachelor’s degrees in International Affairs and Political Science, a concentration in Southwest Asia and North Africa, and a minor in Arabic. During her bachelor's degrees she also spent time studying migration and Arabic at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, where she focused her research on the treatment of Syrian refugees in Istanbul, Turkey.

After graduating she worked for the peace building organization Seeds of Peace, interviewing project managers and participants and writing articles to share stories of community led peace building in Cyprus, India, Pakistan, Palestine, Israel, and the United States. She then began working at the African Community Center, a refugee resettlement agency in Denver, Colorado. Here she coordinated the Cuban parolee program, connecting Cuban parolees with resettlement services, public benefits, ESL, legal and medical aid. Through this position she helped initiate and develop a new emergency assistance program for community members in emergency situations. She speaks Spanish, English, some Arabic and some Thai. Through the ISIM Masters in International Migration and Refugees, she hopes to further develop her analysis of the root causes of migration and conflict, the nuances of community responses to crises, and the policy level decisions that so drastically influence these responses and people's lives.