Katherine Venturo-Conerly
As a PhD student in clinical psychology at Harvard's Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2025 Harvard Horizons Scholar Katherine Venturo-Conerly is on a mission to revolutionize youth mental health care globally through her project "Designing Youth Psychotherapies for the World." This work focuses on creating, testing, and implementing effective, accessible mental health interventions for children and adolescents across multiple contexts, with a special emphasis on Kenya.
Katherine's journey to clinical psychology was driven by a profound desire to improve mental health care accessibility and effectiveness. While volunteering at various mental health organizations, she witnessed firsthand the significant gaps in care and the dire need for more effective, accessible, and contextually appropriate mental health support. These experiences solidified her commitment to these critical issues and led her to co-found the Shamiri Institute with Kenyan entrepreneur and fellow Harvard undergraduate Tom Osborn. Together, they devised a collaborative, community-based, and sustainable approach to bridge the mental health care gap in Kenya and beyond.
The Shamiri program, named for the Kiswahili word meaning "thrive,” employs a scalable, tiered care model using lay providers to deliver psychological interventions in Kenyan schools. Recognizing the scarcity of mental health professionals, the Shamiri team trains non-professionals who demonstrate natural counseling abilities and empathy. These lay counselors are supported by supervisors with some formal psychological training and a small group of expert PhD- and MD-level providers. This innovative design enables the program to reach large numbers of students efficiently, having impacted over 137,000 Kenyan youths so far.
By focusing on positive concepts such as growth mindset, gratitude, and values affirmation, the Shamiri intervention seeks to improve well-being and academic outcomes while circumventing the stigma associated with mental illness. Trials have shown significant improvements in both depression and anxiety symptoms and academic performance among participants, underscoring the program's effectiveness.
Venturo-Conerly’s research endeavors not only aim to scale the Shamiri program to reach more youths but also to refine the intervention strategies to maximize their impact. Her vision for the future includes expanding her work in both the US and other international contexts and personalizing scalable interventions, with an overarching goal of advancing global health equity in youth mental health care.