Katie A. Berglof
Photo Caption: Katie plays on a Holton Merker, a horn developed by professional horn player Ethel Merker (b.1923 - d. 2012), one of the first and only women to have a signature horn designed and major production line named after her. That is extraordinarily rare and almost unheard of in brass instrument history.
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Katie A. Berglof is a founding member of the Board of Directors of Unbound Symphony, former Personnel Chair, and current Vice President & Secretary. She helped support the creation of the National Survey on Orchestral Musician Safety & Culture in partnership with the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, contributing to research aimed at fostering safer and more inclusive environments within the orchestral community.
Katie is a widely recognized musician advocate and journalist on symphony orchestra culture, institutional reform, and labor practices. Her work is distinguished by her advocacy for accountability, musician health and wellbeing, and fair labor rights within the classical music industry.
She is the founder of the orchestra journal Harpsichords & Hot Sauce, and the founder of Courage Over Silence (Read: The Violin Channel's Article on Courage Over Silence), a defense fund supporting musicians navigating harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. Her passion for French horn pedagogy led her to author A Short Guide to Horn Transposition. Her work in musician’s dystonia awareness has been particularly influential. Over the past decade, she has publicly documented her own recovery while advocating for stronger integration between music and medicine. During the pandemic she launched Musicians Dystonia & Injury Live Talk, a livestream interview series featuring 24 musicians and performing arts medicine practitioners.
A lifelong musician, Katie’s background spans music performance as a French horn player, music education in both private and public school settings, arts administration, union representation, human resources, DEI, and community engagement. Her work reflects a holistic understanding of the musical ecosystem, shaped by experience across both artistic and institutional spaces.
She began her studies at the University of Northern Colorado and earned her Bachelor of Music in Horn Performance from the University of Northern Iowa. She later pursued post graduate and graduate studies in K–12 music education and arts administration and leadership at the University of Colorado Boulder and Seattle University. She also holds certification in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through the Human Resources Certification Institute.
Her professional experience spans performance, education, labor, and executive administration. She has held roles with Seattle Symphony in People and Culture (HR), where she served as Office Administrator, Acting Executive Assistant to the President and CEO, and coordinated organizational COVID response efforts. During her tenure, she also helped proctored professional auditions and represented the organization on the Northwest Orchestra Gathering Steering Committee.
She later worked with International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), hiring and upholding fair labor practices for performing arts stage technicians. Her additional experience includes roles with El Sistema Colorado and the University of Denver Newman Performing Arts Center, where she contributed to program support and community engagement initiatives.
Katie was a finalist for the Assistant General Manager role at the International Women’s Brass Conference (IWBC) in 2023 and for the Assistant to the Executive Director position at the International Horn Society (IHS) in 2024. She was also nominated for the IHS Advisory Council in 2023.
Her national leadership includes service on the Advisory Council for the Arts Education Partnership, a collaboration among the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Education Commission of the States. She has also served on the Young Professionals Committee of the Performing Arts Medicine Association (PAMA). She has earned the essentials in performance art medicine certificate for practitioners through PAMA.
Katie is a Salvadoran-born American who was adopted as an newborn infant during the Salvadoran Civil War of the 1980s. She was raised in rural North Dakota by a Midwestern farming family of Scandinavian-American heritage. In 2001, she was able to find her indigenous birth mother, and in 2026, she traveled to San Salvador on vacation and met her birth family in person for the first time.
Katie is passionate about exploring and learning about the heritage, ancestry, and histories of both her biological and adoptive families. In her free time, she enjoys writing, drawing, wood-burning art, hiking, savoring a good cup of coffee, reading tarot, and getting lost in a good book. An avid lifelong learner, her interests include psychology, spirituality, world cultures, and medicine.