Katherine is presently a doctoral student at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, where she is pursuing a doctorate in Egyptology. An Egyptologist, she is a member of the International Association of Egyptologists, the American Schools or Oriental Research, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Egypt Exploration Society, and the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities.  From 1979 – 2001, she was an instructor with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Special Studies/UAB Options, where she taught a variety of adult-level education courses.  She is also President of Griffis Consulting, which is involved in international and domestic project development, educational development, and museum consulting.

For both business and professional purposes, she has found the use of the Internet a necessary tool for communications. Katherine has written articles and been interviewed in various media on the issue of online harassment, based upon her own experiences with online harassment since 1995, as well as reports of online incident of a campaign of multiple false postings to Usenet, which focused upon her credentials, personal and business reputation. This led to a civil lawsuit, in which Alabama Courts ruled such posts were defamatory in January, 1998.

Katherine has served as a volunteer consultant on the legal and technical issues of cyberstalking and online abuse to the following organizations:

• Department of Justice Study on Cyberstalking
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Birmingham and Atlanta Regional Offices
• University of Alabama at Birmingham Police Department
• City of Birmingham Police Department