Kit Messick is the Manager of Special Collections Cataloging and Processing at the Getty Research Institute, and the Chair of the Anti-Racist Description Working Group for GRI Archives and Special Formats formed in 2020 to address and rectify biased language, distortion, and the erasure of BIPOC lives and stories in the descriptions of archives and special formats in Institutional Archives and in Special Collections at the Getty Research Institute. She also participated in the development of a Getty-wide DEAI style guide.

Beyond the Getty, Kit is a member of the SNAC School Working Group and a SNAC School instructor. Previously, she was a processing archivist at the New York Public Library and the New-York Historical Society, and a Junior Fellow in the Manuscripts Preparation Section of the Library of Congress. She received a B.A. in American Studies from Barnard College and an M.L.I.S. from the Pratt Institute.