Born on September 12, 1973, Laura Kate Winterbottom was a graduate of St. Lawrence University, where she majored in Fine Arts and Biology. An avid painter and drawer, as well as a seasoned quilter, Laura went on to receive an MA in both K-12 Education and Graphic Design from the College of New Rochelle. She also studied landscape architecture at the University of Vermont.

After receiving her MA in 1998, Laura moved to Burlington, VT and, with a group of friends, she founded the Outing Club, where she discovered the many wonders of Vermont’s natural environment through hiking, mountain-biking, camping, snow-shoeing, skiing, and snowboarding.

While working as graphic designer at Champlain College and teaching art to children through Young Rembrandts, an after-school program, Laura also devoted her free time to volunteering at Burlington City Arts’ Art from the Heart (an art program for pediatric patients at Vermont Children’s Hospital), ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center, the Flynn Theater, Home Share Vermont, the Humane Society of Chittenden County, and KidSafe Collaborative.

After Laura's untimely death at the age of 31, her mother and father, JoAnn and Ned, and her sister Leigh and brother Aran, established the LKW Fund so that Laura's legacy would live on within the community she so loved in life.