Kate Morse ’03 died last Tuesday in an avalanche in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains near Lake Tahoe. She was 45 years old. According to the New York Times, Morse was on a guided trip with five friends to the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts. She is survived by her husband and their three children.

Morse, then Kate Pettrone, grew up in Averill Park, N.Y. At the College, Morse was a biology major. The local newspaper in her community of Tiburon, Calif., reported that after graduating from the College she attended the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where she met her husband, Eric. 

Friends of Morse set up a GoFundMe page to support the educational expenses for her three children. “Kate’s boundless energy, unshakable positivity, and sense of fun quickly endeared her to the local ski community, and also to the Strawberry community in Marin County, where Kate and Eric settled to raise their three young children,” her friends wrote on the GoFundMe page. 

“Kate was nothing short of an incredible mother and a bright spirit,” they added. “Together with Eric, she built the kind of strong, sweet family everyone loved to be around.”

According to her LinkedIn, Morse was a biotech business leader with over 20 years of experience in global commercial product strategy. As of April of last year, she was Vice President of Commercial Strategy at Septerna, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company. 

In a LinkedIn post, Jeff Finer, CEO and Co-Founder of Septerna, commemorated Morse. “With heavy hearts, we at Septerna honor and remember Kate Morse, a bright light and unforgettable force of energy who we tragically lost in the Tahoe avalanche earlier this week,” he wrote. “Kate was a devoted wife and mother who proudly brought her children to the office, serving as a truly caring and powerful example to our teams.”

As of Feb. 24, the GoFundMe campaign had raised $65,310.