Catherine Kleier is the Associate Dean of Faculty in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at California Polytechnic State University. Prior to that, she was a Professor of Biology at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, where she taught courses on general biology, botany, and ecology. She holds a PhD in Organismic Biology, Ecology, and Evolution from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Professor Kleier was awarded a National Geographic Society/Waitt Grant in 2011 to travel to northern Chile to explore populations of a rare, giant alpine cushion plant, Azorella compacta. In 2013, she was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Botany at the University of Otago in New Zealand, where she investigated facilitation in the alpine cushion plant genus Raoulia. In 2014, she was elected Faculty Lecturer of the Year at Regis University, and in 2015, she was named the Colorado Professor of the Year, sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Professor Kleier is also the presenter of the Great Course Plant Science: An Introduction to Botany.