Dr. Kate S. Kirkland

Houston, TX

Kate Kirkland is the author of two books on Houston, Texas, history: The Hogg Family and Houston: Philanthropy and the Civic Ideal (2009) and Captain James A. Baker of Houston, 1857–1941 (2012). She has been a guest speaker of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, the Houston Seminar, the Houston Metropolitan Research Center’s Friends of the Texas Room, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Dr. Kirkland earned a bachelor’s degree in British history from Wellesley College in 1966 and a Ph.D. in American history from Rice University in 2004. 

Dr. Kirkland says that serving on the Briscoe Center Ambassadors Council nurtures a lifelong passion for history. She has spent long hours in various archives and is fascinated by the breadth of the Briscoe Center’s collection. Her current interests include philanthropy and its role in civil society, women who framed Houston’s story, and Texans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.