After a surprise in her college admissions process, Kate started college thinking she wanted to be a psychology major. After realizing her interests were better aligned with Political Science, Kate found herself on a path in local government, which often presented her with opportunities to learn new skills and take her down new career path possibilities. We talk about the nerves involved with leaving home to go far away to college, working and interning for politicians, graduate work in Urban Planning, how local governments are organized and how they can use data to better our communities, and why Kate decided to leave her long-term city position to venture out on her own with her business partner.
You can follow the work Kate is doing at https://www.porchlightinsights.com/.
After a surprise in her college admissions process, Kate started college thinking she wanted to be a psychology major. After realizing her interests were better aligned with Political Science, Kate found herself on a path in local government, which often presented her with opportunities to learn new skills and take her down new career path possibilities. We talk about the nerves involved with leaving home to go far away to college, working and interning for politicians, graduate work in Urban Planning, how local governments are organized and how they can use data to better our communities, and why Kate decided to leave her long-term city position to venture out on her own with her business partner.
You can follow the work Kate is doing at https://www.porchlightinsights.com/.
Thank you for joining us today on Paths in Progress. I'm your host, Carrie Young. On this podcast, people in a variety of career fields, talk about their journey from choosing their college, deciding which majors and minors to pursue, their first jobs out of college, and all of the hurdles, detours and victories along their path through today. Our goal is to help students hear about a variety of exciting opportunities out there and understand what day-to-day life is like in these careers. I hope you enjoy and learn from our story today. Thanks for listening.
Carrie:Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We are here today with Kate, who is a longtime city employee and a recent founder of a consultant group that helps organizations work with their data. She has a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in urban planning. Kate, thanks so much for joining us today.
Kate:Carrie. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited for the opportunity.
Carrie:I'm excited for you to share your story. Can you take us back to high school as you were looking at colleges and thinking about career path and your educational journey? What were you looking for in high school and how did you approach your college search?
Kate:Yeah, absolutely. So I was definitely a kid who was uncertain about what I wanted to do. I had some sort of childhood career aspirations, you know, I wanted to be a writer. Later on I thought maybe a psychologist, but I did not feel like this is definitely what I wanna do. I didn't have a sense of I'm going to apply to a specific college for a specific career goal. And honestly, I didn't have the best process for looking for a college cause I was really anxious about going. I was anxious about the transition. I had a lot of different college mailings I got and I went through them and kind of looked at pictures and read about the colleges and talked to my friends and that was kind of my process.
Carrie:When you say you're anxious about it, because what I know of you mm-hmm. you were very academically motivated and clearly from an outsider's perspective, you looked like somebody who would be quite successful going to college. So do you mind sharing a little bit of what you were anxious about? Cuz I think a lot of people can relate, definitely relate to anxiety of the whole process of applying to college, but also, you know, what that means for your life and how so many things change.
Kate:Yeah, no, I, it's a good question and good reminder of like what the outside looks like versus the inside. But, I think I was really afraid of change. I was afraid to leave home. That just seemed like such a massive, unimaginable thing to me, the idea of going away from home. At the same time, I knew I wanted to go further from home. You know, I didn't think I wanted to stay in the state or local state. And so I sort of set up this situation for myself where my goal was to go further away, but I was kind of terrified by that idea and what that would mean. I was successful academically, but I struggled with self-esteem in high school. And so I think that contributed to my lack of confidence about not knowing, you know, would I do as well in college and how would it go and what would I do next? It just sort of seemed like a very, kind of a black hole. The benefit I had for sure was that, I had the privilege of having parents who could support my college education. So that obviously takes a lot of burden off of the college search process, right? Is that I really didn't have a lot of limitations from a financial standpoint, and so I had a lot of flexibility. The downside of that flexibility was that it didn't bound my choices in any way. Right. That I just, it sort of felt like no, you could go anywhere and do anything. And I really didn't even know how to begin to limit that. So I found myself kind of focusing on Different areas of the country, or like I said, hearing about reputations of schools and talking to people where they were applying. The school I ended up going to, I really applied there largely because another friend in high school was very excited about the idea of going there, and she applied and I was like, well, might as well. And then maybe I'd know someone. So it's kind of funny to me in retrospect that I ended up, you know, going to a college partially because a friend, you know, led the way in terms of Her interest.
Carrie:Well that was kind of similar for me, too. I didn't really know a lot about the place where I went, far in advance, but I had been introduced to it because a couple of people I knew, like a year older than we or went there. And so we went to visit and I went with another friend to visit. We are often introduced to options and opportunities because somebody we know, you know, is also looking at that or has just started that themselves. I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all, really. Yeah. It's kind of fun. Right?
Kate:No, you're absolutely right. And, and then it's a situation where I think the introduction helped open up a path that I wouldn't have seen. So actually my first for a college was actually Washington University in St. Louis. Since I'd grown up in Kansas City and that felt like it was away from home, you know, far enough. I wanted to go someplace that had a good academic reputation. That was really important to me and was somewhat competitive. And so that felt like the perfect match and we visited and I loved it. And they ended up getting wait listed, which was like a huge blow for me.
Carrie:What?!
Kate:Yeah. And so it made me sort of rethink what I was gonna do. And so I had applied to Brown and I got in and I went to like the accepted students day. And I was, you know, I was sort of terrified. I was like, I did not have any intention of going to the East Coast for school. That sounds really far. But when I went and visited the campus, it was like, it clicked, right? I was like, this is amazing. I love the feel of it here. The feel of the campus was really important to me. When I was a kid, I thought maybe I wanted to go to Northwestern in Chicago, cause I thought Chicago seemed cool. And when I visited the campus, I was like, no, I don't wanna go here. It felt like really big and impersonal and not like a campus. So I feel like those college visits being able to just be on a campus, even if you don't go to a class or even talk to a student, it makes a difference. It made a difference for me to know, can I imagine myself here?
Carrie:Yeah, me too. Yeah.
Kate:So brown, you know, fit that mold. I feel like I was not strategic and not as thoughtful as I should have been, but I still kind of lucked out in my college experience that I ended up in a great place that was a good fit for me, and gave me a ton of opportunity. And the funny thing, is that I ended up going to school with that high school friend, and while we're still still in touch and things in college, we totally both went on our own paths and didn't even see each other that much. So I'm headed to Brown and I'm excited to go there, but I didn't really have a very strong sense. The closest thing I thought was maybe psychology and I signed up for a psychology class. I should say Brown has an open curriculum. So there's no like, foundational requirements for classes. You have to take requirements for your major, but you don't have to take a certain number of math or, you know, English or anything like that, so
Carrie:Oh, wow. Really?
Kate:Yeah. So I mean, that was actually really attractive to me. But once I was there, yeah, I was like, wait, so I could just sign up for anything? I mean, it's kinda I have this, you know.
Carrie:Yeah. It can be disorienting, I'm sure, especially for students who maybe have little guidance or not have a background to where they know what to do. But I mean, for some people that's such a dream because some people will literally change their major or pick a different school because there's this one requirement that they don't wanna do. Yeah. Math a lot of the times, you know, or something, that totally derails them. Yeah. And puts'em on a different path. So that's so interesting.
Kate:Yeah. Yeah. So when I went to sign up for classes, knowing there were no requirements, I kind of had this, and I think they still like, sent out an actual course catalog then, you know, and so like, flipping through it, trying to figure out, yeah. The only thing I knew I couldn't take things that had a pre-req, but there were tons of Classes that were entry level. I was like, okay, I'll take like entry level psychology cause that might be of interest. And then this class caught my eye about the American presidency in the political science department. And I was like, that sounds interesting. I like history. So I signed up for that. And then I'm pretty sure for my other two classes I was so lost about where else to go that I actually just signed up for like an English class and a math class, even though I wasn't required to because it felt like I was supposed to, you know, be balanced or something.
Carrie:This is weird. Yeah. How do I not have to do these? Right.
Kate:I think maybe a lot of colleges have like a shopping process where you can spend the first week going to classes and seeing what you think of them.
Carrie:Like adding and dropping? Yeah.
Kate:Yeah. Yeah. So Brown had that. And so it was really nice cuz you could go to a bunch of classes the first week and kind of be like, this one definitely not the syllabus, you know, they don't like it or I don't care for the teacher. I'm pretty sure I dropped the English right away cause I was like, I don't actually wanna take an English class. I just felt like I had to. So out of those classes it turned out I took I think at least several psychology classes in my first couple years. And I did not enjoy them. I was like, this just doesn't grab me in the way I thought it would. I didn't like the sort of lab and science part of it. I found a lot of it boring, which I didn't expect. That really turned me off to that career path, cuz I thought, I don't think I can study this and be interested in it. Yeah. On the flip side, my American presidency class was taught by, I really think maybe one of the most elderly professors on the entire campus. Truly. I think he'd been teaching it a really long time. He was not particularly engaging. He was like kind of a standup and lecture, no visuals type thing. And I think tons of people were bored outta their minds. And I was just a. I was so into it, even though it wasn't even that engaging of a classroom structure.
Carrie:Yeah.
Kate:And so that was kind of a cue I think for me, that I was like, wow, if it's this interesting to me that I wanna dig in, even without a particularly engaging professor. Right from that first semester I thought, I think this might be what I wanna major in.
Carrie:Yeah. That's so important to listen to that because I think a lot of students have an idea of what they think a certain major will be or what a certain career path will be, and then they start the classes and sometimes just keep on going even though they're starting to realize. like, I don't particularly enjoy this, or I'm not quite that interested in it, but they feel like they have to keep going as they've committed to this major, or they've always thought they wanted to be a whatever, you know? But it's so important to, when you're sitting in the classes, not that the content of every single class is gonna be pertinent to your career path. I mean, let's put that out there. Yeah. But if you're taking multiple classes and you're bored and you're disengaged and you don't like it, like, think about that, you know, why is that happening and do you need to make a change?
Kate:Yeah. I think that's really true. And I think there's a difference between an academic view of a subject and the professional pursuit of it. But the questions that are being raised in the academic environment, there's a direct through line to the professional world. And those are gonna be central questions in that career path. And if you're not engaged, if those questions don't interest you, then I think that that doesn't bode well that, that you will be engaged and interested in that career because the kind of central issues of political science and policy and were fascinating to me, right. The leadership part, the policy part, you know, how do you kind of run effective government. All of those things were, and like you said, you'd have to take some classes for majors that are dry or don't have great professors and they don't grab you in the same way. But like the overarching themes of political science were really a draw for me.
Carrie:Yeah. So as you started to take more classes in that area, like when did you decide to actually declare that major? Were you thinking about career path yet at that point? Or were you just like, this subject interests me so I wanna take more classes and get this degree?
Kate:I'm pretty sure I decided that I would pick that as my major by the end of freshman year. So I was relatively set there and I couldn't tell you exactly. I think I was starting to play around with the idea of government as a realm of work. In political science, you're studying political officials, like I said, policy. And so I definitely had an interest of what would it look like to work for elected officials, at various levels. I wanna say starting my sophomore year, I started to explore some internships. I was in Providence, which is the capital Rhode Island. And so had the opportunity to intern for a state rep. For state legislatures, it kind of depends on where you're located, right? Sometimes state legislature might be across the state from your college. But if it is local, almost every state legislature or state legislator is looking for intern support in some way. And that might be, you know, for a campaign, which is different, but it also could be just helping in their office. And it might be unpaid, right? A lot of state legislators don't really have much compensation of their own. Others have, you know, there might be a system set up by the legislature that has some sort of compensation built in, but there's definitely opportunities. I know tons of other people in my field who that was one of the things they did in college was intern for a state legislature.
Carrie:Yeah. So what was that experience like for you?
Kate:It was really interesting. One thing is, often you might be doing more mundane administrative work, right? On answering phones or writing things up or doing research, answering emails. But it's a pretty flat like hierarchy. There aren't usually a ton of people working for an elected legislator at the state level. They might not have any paid staff, or they might just have one or two. So you're really close to them. You're really close to the process. You're almost certainly sitting in on the elected body committee meetings. So you just have a ton of opportunity to sit back and observe. Honestly in an environment where you know, they're expecting you to provide basic support, but, you can just kind of sit back and learn a lot from the process and from the people who are doing the work. So that was a great chance to sort of see things in operations. I've always found government to be sort of exciting and interesting, you know, up close. And so I was actually interested in being able to attend those committee meetings. The state legislator I worked for, she, I met with her a lot individually, right? And she would talk to me about her policy priorities and her view of her district, which included our campus. And then, she was really helpful to me in talking to me about some of my career aspirations, too. But so that, just that one-to-one interaction with someone, with an elected leader to see what it was like, to be in their shoes, but also to to work with them. From there, I thought that, you know, that that was a great experience. It gave me a view of state government. I also interned for a little policy group, that was like a nonprofit that supported policy work. So that gave me a view of that perspective. I decided I really wanted to have the DC experience. I really wanted to intern for US Senator, but Congress was something I was thinking about too. When I did it, and I think maybe still it was a pretty regimented approach. I was told like it was really hard to intern for a US senator who wasn't your home state. So that I kind of went through those processes and found the current sitting US senators, and applied to work for them. As it happened, and this is something that, you know, some people wanting to go into politics or government may be thinking of, you know, I was interested in politics, but I was interested in government more than that. I wasn't so much that I wanted to be involved in the partisan side, but if you're working for an elected official, they usually represent a party. As it happened in the state of Kansas, both of our senators were Republicans, which I didn't completely align with a lot of their viewpoints. So I ended up just sort of picking the one that I thought was closer, but knowing that I was gonna really intern for somebody who I wasn't totally in line with. And yeah, that was a good experience though. Cause I got to see again, the mechanisms of government are the same on both sides. All of that is the same. As an intern working, in a US Senate office, one of the things they had us do was draft replies to constituents for emails and letters. So we would've to sort of research the status of a bill and then, if the senator had a position, you know, express that. And so, you know, some of the positions I was expressing, I was like, I don't know if that would be my opinion, but it was a good experience to put yourself in the shoes of the elected representative and see their perspective and do that part of the job. It was really exciting to be in DC. I mean, I think if you're interested in government or politics, it's a really fun place to be for a summer and got to meet a ton of people my age and just get to know the city and, at the end of it I was like, do I want to live there, though? That seems pretty intense. I mean, the people who worked there full-time, it felt like that their whole life was their work, you know, that Yeah. Inside the beltway. I've always felt like I wanted to have a job that very much let me have a life balance, too. Walking away from that, I thought that was really fun for a summer. I'm not sure if that is the right path. So that kind of effectively, for me, told me like, I'm not sure if federal government, or at least working for federal elected officials is where I wanna go.
Carrie:Yeah. That's such a great thing to walk away with, because I think sometimes people go, oh, you know, I did this internship in this and I decided not to go this path, and it feels like a waste of time. But it's not a waste of time. If you're learning that that's not what you wanna do. That's still a valuable lesson to walk away.
Kate:Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That's completely how I've treated my career. That every internship, even every job, you take something away from it, even if it's, yeah, I don't want this and I don't want this.
Carrie:Right. Or that's not how I would do that, or that is not how I will supervise other people when I manage them.
Kate:Right, right. Whatever. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. All those lessons learned. So as I kind of moved forward in my college career, I'm sort of at this point thinking, I think I wanna work in maybe state government. And I will say, stepping back, I sort of wish that I had had a little bit more guidance even in high school about the opportunities in public sector. I didn't really feel like that was presented to me as a career option. I don't know. I don't remember a lot of career development honestly in high school. Maybe I've just forgotten it, but I
Carrie:no, I don't think we had it.
Kate:Yeah. Yeah. So, and then they probably do more now, I would guess. Like looking at my kids. Yeah. It seems like they have more conversations and development in that area. But yeah, I just felt like it, I had to get to college before I even understood like, what are the opportunities to work in government? And then I really had to get into those areas before I explored it further. So, it was sort of hidden for me. So I decided state government seemed really interesting as it happened. I was going to school in Providence, Boston's about an hour from Providence. They have a professional legislature, which means they meet year round and they actually have paid staff. And so there just were a fair number of job opportunities there. You know, they hired legislative aids and kind of entry level people. I had a lot of friends who were moving to Boston. It was a common, you know, kind of place for people to move after they left Brown. And then my boyfriend was already there, so that helped obviously as well. So all those things together, I was like, this is what I'm gonna do. I applied for a job opportunity that I found. I was like, oh, I think I'm gonna get this, this was before I graduated, so it all seemed like it was lining up. I went through several interviews. I got a letter in the mail that I didn't get it, and I was like, really devastated. Felt like, yeah, everything had been lining up. And it didn't work out. But I decided I would move to Boston anyway. Again, my parents were able to kind of help me get established and so I had that benefit of being able to get set up. I started looking for a job and I was sort of like, I should apply to a variety of things, right? Like, I can't just focus on this one place I wanna work. Harvard, the university, had a ton of hiring opportunities and a lot of them, again, were focused on recent graduates. And it was mostly administrative assistant type roles. So I applied for a couple of those and it was such a big, they had hired so many people every year. They actually had like a recruiter who called me. And it happened really, really quickly. The interview, I mean, the whole thing was like within a week. And I was sort of taken aback because I sort of thought that it might take longer and I thought the job seemed okay. I thought, you know, that seemed like it'd be good on a resume and it didn't sound like terrible work, but I wasn't like really interested in it. But it also paid pretty well. and I really good benefits and had like two weeks off at Christmas and I remember the recruiter, which she gave me the offer, I was like, well, can I have 24 hours to think about it? And she actually said, Oh. And I was like, cuz it's my life. I mean, I think she was like, oh God, this is such a good opportunity, you should jump on it.
Carrie:Right. But I like, it's working at Harvard, so we're not used to people needing to think about it.
Kate:Yeah, exactly. I know. I was like, uh, no, I'm, I'm gonna take 24 hours. But then after the 24 hours I was like, no, it is a good opportunity. I should take it. And, you know, have an income and get settled. So, I know you've worked in academia. It was mm-hmm. it was an interesting exposure to the world of academia, especially like pretty intense academic environment. In some ways I was pretty removed. I obviously wasn't faculty. I supported several faculty that I worked for between like two and five faculty kind of over time. And you know, some of it was interesting. A couple of them asked me to help them with their research and so I would Do some of that work. And that was the most interesting work I did. A lot of them had research assistants also though. I did a fair amount of just administrative scheduling and, you know, helping with them, coordinate with students and all those sorts of things.
Carrie:I think a lot of times when people graduate from college, there's this pressure to get this awesome job in your field, right? Or there's this pressure to get this ideal situation that is what you think you want at that time. But the reality is that doesn't happen for a lot of people. Yep. If not most people. Right? And so I just wanna say like, I'm so glad you're telling this story in this way cuz I think it's really great to point out that it's okay to start off in a role that is not your ideal thing or was not the perfect thing that you were looking at. Because like you're saying before, there's always things you can take from that. The people that you meet, some skills that you pick up, experience that you have, you know, even for you, you know the name of where you work just obviously carries weight on a resume regardless of what you're doing. So it's okay to have that time because it also gives you time to spend more time applying to other jobs. Yeah. You know, that are your ideals. So it's okay to have that stepping stone and there is value in a stepping stone.
Kate:Oh, absolutely. And that's something else that I wish that I sort of had that permission from. Maybe I needed to give it to myself. Yeah. But it feels like there was the, yeah, like you said, this pressure of, well you gotta jump right on your career path and everything has to be a linear, forward movement. And you know, the further on I got in my career, I'm like, that's not true at all. Like, right? You progress forward, but it's constantly back and forth. So I wish that I had kind of, you know, had that sense of like, it's fine. Like, take a job, that's a good job, but even if it's not exactly what you wanna do. And see where you go from there. And I mean, I took a ton of things away from that job. Like you said, it was actually kind of just enjoyable cause I didn't take any of the work home with me like literally or figuratively. Yeah. And so I really enjoyed my first couple years outta college. Like I just did a lot of stuff socially and had enough disposable income to do some fun things. In that sense, like it was a really good transition to the work environment. I also gave me an inside view of academia, which I think I had plenty of people later on say, oh, have you thought about becoming a researcher? Becoming an academic. And honestly, that couple years was enough to tell me like, I don't think this is where I would wanna be for my career either as a yeah, support staff or to try to be a professor. I was like, this seems really hard and I don't think it's a passion for me, and it seems like it has to be. So that it helped tell me that. And then I think it also ultimately helped me understand that you can have a job that is reasonably enjoyable where you have great colleagues, there's a good atmosphere and good benefits and everything. But it still wasn't enough for me. Like after a couple years I was like, no, I do still wanna try to do something that's more in my career. Like, this was a good starting off point, but I wanna move on. So I went back to my goal of gonna the state legislature. Started applying. Found a great opportunity, you know, was again like, this is happening. I'm almost positive this time. They're really like, indicating that they're leaning toward giving me an offer. And then they called and said, we just had our budgets cut. We can't afford to hire a full-time person. Oh. So it was like I was back to square one all over again. But they ended up calling back and saying, look, we do really wanna hire you. We think we could offer you a part-time job. And I'm pretty sure with it had benefits, but it was just from a salary standpoint, they could only offer me, you know, half salary. And so that was kind of a decision point. Cause it feels like a step back, but I was like, I do really wanna work there. And they said, you know, we think over time we'll be able to free up the salary and turn it into full-time cuz we'd rather have you full-time. We just don't have the budget. I was kind of like, feels like a step back, but I really wanna be there. I believe them and I think it'll be a good opportunity. When I was thinking about, okay, well how am I gonna, can't support myself on a halftime salary, but I had been a, SAT tutor in college that was like a side job that I picked up for a company that did SAT tutoring. Mm-hmm. And it was very well paid for a job at that time, like, because of course, like they were charging parents a lot for the SAT tutoring, so they could afford to pay the tutors a fair amount. I actually enjoyed it. Like I was sort of dorky and liked taking tests and so I liked working with the students and that that was really satisfying to like work with them and work through their issues and that tutoring process. So I thought that, I was like, you know what, maybe I can go back to that company and see if it was also like you could work with as many clients as you wanted. And so I went back and started working for them for a period of time, as like my side work. And it also was the type of work that was mostly evenings and weekends, and so, mm-hmm. you know, my office job. I think I worked like two, two and a half days a week in the office, and then I would do that on nights and weekends. I'm glad I did it because it was like my entryway back into the public sector. And led to a lot of things. And I think had I said, no, I'm gonna hold out for a full-time job. I don't really know what would've happened.
Carrie:Yeah. Well, and that's also just a great lesson too for people to think about is when what you really wanna do can only be offered to you part-time or it's only available on a part-time basis, then do something else the other part of the time. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like you could, whatever that is, if it's helping you reach your goal or it's getting your foot in the door. And you're at a point in your life where you can do that, you know, you don't have a mortgage or you don't have, you know, right. I mean, it's you're out of school. Yeah, you can turn to something else part-time, which are, you know, there's 1,000,001 things that you can do there, whether, anything from waiting tables to going back to a job that you worked earlier in your life. So that's just a great reminder that just because you're graduated out of college and you had a full-time job, if getting your foot in the door, you know, you need to negotiate in that way. Yeah. Do it. I mean, that can really help you down your path. Yeah.
Kate:Well, and, I think the fact that I was part-time also, I was really leaning in like I was probably almost treating it like an internship cuz I wasn't there every day and so I was really trying to learn as much as I could. I also really wanted to impress them and be a Yeah. You know, full-time position. So the funny thing is after just a few months of doing that and it was going well, it was a state senator I was working for. This was a state senator who I just really admired. I admired her from a policy standpoint. And she was actually the first openly gay state senator in Massachusetts. So, admired kind of her setting that example and, yeah, embracing it and kind of being that role model. And, she actually got hired to go work for a national advocacy organization in DC.
Carrie:Oh wow.
Kate:This was right during the timeframe that a lot of gay rights issues were coming up. The court case in Massachusetts that legalized gay marriage there was during that year. So she got hired away and then they were like, okay, well we have to have a special election now to fill her seat. And so it was sort of like all of the stability I was aiming for, I was, it was exciting, you know, for her and her staff was excited, but it was like, okay, now what? They kept staff on until the end of the election, you know, helping to support the district and constituents. And then once the election happened, the new person would come in and theoretically they could hire some of the same staff or they might hire new staff. So I still had a job, but it had an uncertain future. But her chief of staff decided to run for her seat, in the special election. And he, again, opportunity, because I was part-time, he said, do you wanna come work part-time on the campaign, for me? And so I transitioned to working halftime in this senate office and halftime for him on his campaign for the senate office, Oh wow. So that was a whole different, I'd never really done that type of campaign work, certainly not as paid staff. And it was really intense, you know, really emotional, just so much passion, right. From the candidate. Yeah. And then from all the people working on it. And it was again, really exciting and whirlwind. I worked felt like just crazy hours. I mean, I think I had a limited number of hours based on what they were paying, but also I was putting in extra time and I was working on like a lot of nights and weekends. So it kind of really poured myself into it. It was also like in the winter, so it was Massachusetts, it was freezing or like canvassing doors and in February. And so it all was very intense. It led up to the election day and he lost by like a really slim margin. I know. I was like this, it feels like my early career stuff is: and then it didn't work out So again, I learned a tremendous amount. One of the things I learned actually was I was like, I'm glad I have this experience with campaigns and a lot of this will be relevant. I don't wanna do this work. It just didn't suit my skillsets or my interests enough. Again, a life work balance was a big part of it. So that was actually an important thing for me to say, Hey, I like government work and I like policy, but I don't know, working for an elected official, it's hard to not be involved in campaigns. So, mm-hmm. that was kind of an early indicator for me. I ended up without a job again. But the good news was once I had this experience working in the legislature, it was a lot easier to get a job cuz everyone was looking for somebody who already kind of knew the ropes. Yeah. And so I actually got another job for another state senator within a couple months. I think another thing, but leaning into opportunities, for the first state senator, they asked if I was willing to work on press and communications. And I didn't really have any experience. It wasn't something that I was super like, I don't know, thought that I really wanted to do, but I was like, sure, yeah, I'll learn anything. And I ended up becoming the press secretary for the next state senator because of that experience I had. So, it was a good kind of chance to apply those skills and do something a little different than I thought.
Carrie:Yeah. Can you explain for students, because I think we all see press secretaries in press conferences mm-hmm. but that's probably most of what people know about that type of role. So can you explain a little bit the types of things that you were doing?
Kate:Yeah, I think the job has changed somewhat or the mediums of communication, right? The types of communication have changed since I was working, cuz I was still sending out faxing, you know, actual press releases. But the basics I think are still the same, which are, you know, if you're in a press role or like a communications role even for a company, you're really kind of always thinking through the perspective of how's everything we're doing right now being translated, as a narrative or as a story. And working for an elected official, you're very focused on the press for sure, the media. I think also constituents are the ultimate audience. We were trying to reach them through the press, and the elected official I worked for didn't actually do a lot of direct constituent outreach, like newsletters or anything like that. But I think now that's a lot more common and that would probably also fall into a press role. So it's thinking through the implications of things, right? Oh, we just got this bill at a committee, we should share this news and kind of find an opportunity to maybe see if we could get an article about it. Yeah. It's like packaging the information for different audiences, right? Which ended up being something that was very relevant to my career. But it's, how can I make this information Relevant and accessible and useful to different people. So I kind of got to know some of the major newspapers and what they might be interested in, what they wouldn't be. It was a lot of also like swing and a miss in press. Like you're constantly throwing out things, and maybe one in 10 gets picked up. So that was a good lesson in constantly trying and being happy with the success you get and not expecting, being okay with failure really, which is, yeah. Another thing that's been been crucial. So for me, the area of like press and communications, I liked the storytelling, I like thinking about audiences and, that's become a big part of my career now. I didn't really like the intensity especially if it was like something went wrong, we have to try to explain this sort of the crisis management part. Or when I had to deal with reporters, I found really stressful. One time I had to deal with a, there was a reporter who wrote an article that was really not factual. It had a lot of issues about the state senator I was working for, and the other staff were like, you need to deal with this. Like, you need to call them and yell at them. and I was like, that sounds like the worst thing I've ever heard. But I did and I demanded a retraction and of course they didn't do anything. For me, I was like, I'm eliminating this as like a full-time role, but there were some good takeaways that I got from it about kind of how it communications is a really important role, really for any organization. And yeah, I think it's un even if it's not your role, I think it's good to understand How it contributes.
Carrie:Right. So how long did you do that?
Kate:I was in that job for a couple of years, and while I was doing it, at this point, I was starting to think, okay, really, I'm on a career path, right? I'm doing what I wanna do, so what comes next? Where do I go? Like, how do I grow from here? And I was looking around, really at my colleagues and seeing, well, the people who are policy directors, how did they get there, right? Or what's been their path. And I realized a couple things. One was that a lot of people seemed to have master's degrees, who it was really their career. And I thought, okay. I was kind of interested in graduate school, but I hadn't had a specific area I wanted to focus on. And so I was like, okay, maybe that needs to be my next step. The other thing was that working in the Senate office, we represented part of Boston. And so I went to meetings with city staff, because, if a constituent was having problems with like snow removal or something, which was a common problem in Boston, the state senator's office would get involved even though the Senate doesn't do anything with snow removal. But it was sort of like an extra level of accountability. And so I would go to the meeting and help listen to the constituent, help them express their concerns and then if there was anything I could do to help the city staff in resolving it. In those meetings, I actually thought, in some ways I don't know why I was jealous of city staff trying to deal with snow removal issues. Cuz now looking at my career, I'm like, that's a actually a really horrible topic and very hard thing to deal with But instead because maybe I wasn't responsible, I was like, wow, this is so interesting. These are like daily problems that they get to help people with. The things that cities do, are the majority of things people interact with it, in their daily lives. Yeah.
Carrie:You can see like tangible results from that when you help somebody. Mm-hmm.
Kate:Mm-hmm. So, it sort of triggered that for me that I think maybe I'd wanna try working for a city. That seems like it would be really interesting work. And then I also, as I mentioned, I liked working for elected officials, didn't love the campaign work. And I was starting to have the sense of, wow, okay, all of our big victories are we passed a bill. And then we would celebrate it and send out the press release and, you know, it'd be a big thing. And then I'd be like, wait, but what did that bill do? What's the outcome? What if it changed something in the state government? Was that a good thing? Did it lead to positive outcomes? And so I felt kind of removed from the administrative part of government, right? Mm-hmm. the, the bureaucracy. Mm-hmm. I guess is how a lot of people refer to it. I was interested in what's it actually look like a day-to-day for them. So I was kind of thinking about those two shifts of moving from elected staff to administrative staff, and then moving from state to city. And so I had both those things in mind when I was looking for grad schools. I also took the opportunity, you know, I was like, okay, haven't totally settled down somewhere I had was starting to have the sense I maybe wanted to move back to Kansas City, which this is something else I preached to people because I went further from home than I really wanted to or intended to for college. And I think it sparked a ton of independence for me and really allowed me to kind of stand on my own two feet. But I also, when I moved away, I thought, that I was never coming back. That was part of why I didn't wanna go, was that I thought, well, if you move, you can't ever come back. I don't know why I thought that, but, oh. Yeah, it just seemed like that's a final decision. And after about eight years away with college and working, I was like, wait, no, I can go back. That's okay.
Carrie:Yeah. You can go anywhere. Yep.
Kate:So I was starting to think like, oh, this might be a good opportunity to eventually go back to Kansas City. But in the meantime, if I'm not tied to Boston and I'm not tied anywhere really, I could just go someplace for grad school and live somewhere new. And have that experience. I think when I was applying, I got married that year. So I did have a husband, but you know, still no mortgage and he was flexible, he was willing to move with me. He was working in journalism, so he felt like he had good opportunities to move around, too. So, I ended up going to NYU, the Wagner School. New York was high on my list in terms of other places I wanted to live. I had a lot of friends there. I felt like it was a great place to live for two years. I'd visited New York enough and had enough friends there that I wasn't sure if it was a place I'd really wanna live long term, but I thought for two years it would be super fun.
Carrie:That's such a great point, because I think we all have those feelings about different places. Like I'd love to live there for a little bit, Yeah. Or you know, it would be great to live there as a student or as a graduate student. Yes. But I wouldn't necessarily want to, and I'm, you know, I'm not saying anything in particular about New York, but you know, if you're thinking about raising a family or having a long-term career, or perhaps being closer to your family or, you know, whatever it is you're thinking, college and grad school are these incredible opportunities to just have this pocket of time where you live in a different place. That's such a great way to think about that.
Kate:Yeah. Yeah. And I think I also, having moved to Providence for college and then Boston for work, I think I also had the confidence of like, oh, I can move somewhere else. You know? Yeah. I'm really glad that I did. I loved NYU. It felt very different than I had a very different experience than college, right? I lived further from campus and I was married. I still like, had plenty of time socializing and everything. I went to school full-time, but I also worked part-time, the whole time. That was a big thing about the school that they encouraged. And they actually had an equal number of part-time and full-time students. Ultimately everyone was working and everyone was in school.
Carrie:Were they encouraging work in the field, in the industry? Yep. Is that what they meant?
Kate:Yep, exactly.
Carrie:Did they assist with that? Was there some kind of program to work with the university to try to find positions that you could Yes. You know, work around your schedule?
Kate:Yes, they, yep. They had a lot of connections to local government or private organizations supporting the public sector. There was a lot of good connections that were made by the school and they were kind of set up and I actually, for one of the jobs I had, I worked part-time for an office that was headed up by one of my classmates who was a full-time employee there. So that was really cool. Cause he was more advanced than I was career-wise. But we were in the same program, you know, and we actually, yeah, were on the same capstone project. I had the viewpoint of like all my classes, but I also had all these perspectives from my classmates and the different jobs they were working in. And there was also a fair amount of, somebody had done one internship and then the internship was still available, so another classmate would take it up the next semester. There was a lot of turnover in that way, so you could kind of, people say, oh, this is really good, you should do this. So I was really intentional there. I was again, trying to hone in and narrow more about like, what specifically do I wanna do? So I worked for city government in New York. I worked for a state office that did stuff around city government, so it was focused on New York City. And then I also worked actually for a private sector consulting firm that did urban planning because my degree was in, this is another, I guess, takeaway is that I was originally looking for Master of public Administration or Master's of Public Policy Programs. Those were the two degrees I just saw the most that people had. Mm-hmm. when I looked at the Wagner School at nyu, it's a school of public service, so it, it had an MPA. But when I looked at all their degree offerings, they had a Master of Urban Planning and I was like, Hmm, well I'm interested in public administration, but I wanna work for a city. That's my goal. So I actually talked to the admitting, the missions department and said, okay, if this is kinda my career goal, which of these degree programs should I Pursue? And they had the same shared like foundational classes and stuff. It was just kind of the mm-hmm. the specific requirements for each ones were different and they said, you know, I would do the urban planning degree cuz that is much more focused on cities. It was interesting cuz urban planning is a pretty broad topic and so I was studying with people who wanted to be urban planners who wanted to work for cities or other jurisdictions, people who wanted to work in the private sector as urban planners.
Carrie:Can you explain what an urban planner is? Yeah. Just in case there's people listening that don't know. Yeah.
Kate:So urban planning is the field in some ways, related to architecture. I actually think it's a lot less well known than architecture. People are familiar with architects build buildings, right? And plan specific developments. Urban planners are thinking about the overall space of a city and how all those buildings come together. If they're working for cities or counties, their work focuses on how do cities set out guidelines and policies for space. So zoning is a really common one, right? That's present, yeah in a lot of cities. Not in Houston where you are.
Carrie:No. Which is super interesting. Yeah. Just driving through certain areas.
Kate:Mm-hmm. Yeah. My brother went to college in Houston and so I was like, what is going on here?
Carrie:Especially in that area. You could go down one street and you feel like you're in six different neighborhoods at the same time.
Kate:Yeah. Houston is like a famous place for urban planners for that reason. So, you know, those type of things, but also planning documents, right? For this area of the city, we're expecting this type of population growth and that means we need to provide these different services and education comes into that. What's our parkland look like? And park amenities. Really all of the things that represent the built environment. it can be things that are impacted by the urban planning process. So it's a very information rich field, but it also works with people a lot and it's really collaborative cuz it's about pulling together all of these different factors and trying to identify a good path forward. I think if you're somebody who's interested in buildings in the built environment, but maybe architecture isn't what you're thinking. Like for me, that's how I was. I love buildings. I love cities, but I was never driven to be an architect per se. So this was kind of a interesting parallel field.
Carrie:Is it fair to say that you're really analyzing kind of the needs of the community, too? Like as far as, you know, food desert studies and hospital needs, you know, like in this area, what is this community lacking and how can we you know advocate for certain things to be added to this community or change to the community to serve the people who are living there?
Kate:Yeah. No, I think that exactly sums it up better than I did. But it's also, you know, it's a technical role where you're gathering information and like you said, analyzing and finding those things. But you're also finding and elevating the voices of the community. And it's an urban planner, you're really trying to, like you said, serve their needs, but also understand from their perspective what their needs are. So it's a nice Yeah. Merging of the two. I should say too, urban planners, you know, I'm describing kind of a very generalist role, but there's a lot of specialty, too there. A lot of my colleagues went on to transportation planning specifically. Mm-hmm. So that might be working with engineers and others on road development, but also could be public transportation and planning a light rail or street car or subways and doing stop planning and the areas around it. So it also connects a lot with economic development as a field. Mm-hmm. So there's a lot of intersections with urban planning. And then if you're in the private sector, a lot of times you're working hand in hand with the public sector with cities and counties and school districts and such to help them do these things. To help them do studies, to help them do plans, kind of add additional capacity and technical expertise.
Carrie:Yeah. So as you were going through that program, what did you gain from that program as far as helping you learn kind of the next steps you wanted to take after graduate school?
Kate:I think, having that urban planning perspective and like you said, that understanding this concept of pulling together information and data to help a city identify the right path forward for the community. But also layering in the resident engagement. I found that whole thing really interesting and really attractive. I was like, okay, yeah, this is what I thought working in city government was. I like this aspect of helping, it's like solving a problem, but such a complex problem and there's actually no one right answer. There's a lot of opportunity I think for creative thinking. And again, like the collaboration in urban planning, there is no single expert. It's usually you're drawing from a lot of different expertise to help form a solution. My experience with the private sector, it was interesting, but I didn't feel like I had the. I lost a little bit of the connection to the community or to the jurisdiction, and I was like, I think I really want that. It underscored for me that I wanted to work for a city as opposed to being in the private sector. It did really firm up my interest in and commitment to cities, as being a really specific area of interest. It kind of set me up well when I was looking at graduating. I really thought at this point we wanted to move to Kansas City, my husband and I. So I started looking for opportunities, working for Kansas City, Missouri specifically, which again, all of these skill sets I'm talking about, and all of these job opportunities are available at all sizes of government, right. And smallest. Yeah. Towns, villages have some paid staff. Coming from living in Boston and New York, I was like, no, I really wanna work for a big city. Urban environments are really exciting and interesting. They also face a ton of challenges everywhere. So I was actually motivated and interested by those challenges. Again, my story is very much sort of picking a role. I sort of picked an employer that I wanted to work for, and then looked at what the opportunities were in that for that employer.
Carrie:What I just wanted to say is a little side note for people listening who have not been to Kansas City or not familiar with it. Yes. There is Kansas City, Missouri, and there's Kansas City, Kansas. Yes, they are. Yep. Like sits on the state line, but there's two, I mean, it's a whole complicated thing. I get questions about that all the time. Yep. I don't know if you do too. Oh, do you have like a little synopsis that you usually give people when they're like, is it two cities? Is it separated? How does this work?
Kate:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I should say, I think if I had been broader in my thinking, I would've looked at applying to K C K as well, but I felt like growing up I didn't have as much as much exposure to K C K, right. Now I have lots of colleagues and friends who work there.
Carrie:Even though we lived on the Kansas side, I know, right? Yeah. It's confusing when you explain it to people.
Kate:Right. So, I mean, you know, when you think about a city, in a metro area, you know, there's often one center city, surrounded by suburbs, but a lot of times it's more complicated than that. So in Kansas City, you have, Kansas City, Missouri is by far the biggest central city. It's about half a million in the metro area is about two and a half million. But Kansas City, Kansas is a separate jurisdiction on the Kansas side. And it's actually. To get into really confusing things. It's actually a unified government with its county. So that happened like 20 or 30 years ago. So it's a slightly different form of government, but yeah, it's very much an urban city with kind of some suburban elements like Kansas City, Missouri has. But it's significantly smaller. But it's still over a hundred thousand people. And it really has a lot of the same types of challenges with actually, I think they don't get the attention, like you said, people don't have the awareness of Kansas City, Kansas, but Yeah. In some ways you know, other cities have like a Twin Cities element, right? Like in Minnesota where you really have a couple of central cities. Kansas City also has in the area, there's other cities that are much older than suburbs and are big enough to be cities on their own, like independence, which is east of Kansas City. So, yeah, that, I think as, as I went on, I was like, okay. In my mind there's like cities, suburbs, and, you know, towns, but it's more, more complex than that for sure. Mm-hmm. and every metro is a little different too.
Carrie:So were you seeking out a particular kind of role in Kansas City, Missouri, or were you just kind of open to starting wherever? What were you thinking about as you went through that application process?
Kate:So I looked at the city planning department because I knew my degree lined up well there. One thing I discovered was that, and this is a great note, if you're interested in working for a city. Up to this point, I was like in my mid to late twenties, I really did not know a lot about city governance structures. Everybody thinks about mayors. Everybody's familiar with mayors. And a lot of big cities, most big cities have what's called a strong mayor form of government, which means there's a mayor and there may be a city council also. And when the mayor's elected, all of the department directors work for them. So, they can come in and change them if they want. And then everybody lower in the organization works for the department directors. In Kansas City and in a lot of mid-size cities, it's kind of very state by state, but there's what's called a council manager form of government. So you still have a mayor. But the city manager is actually the one, is it someone who's hired, by the mayor and council to have all the department directors report to them and to manage all of the operations of the city. So it sort of makes a little bit of a division between like policy and administration. And it puts an emphasis on kind of the professional side of administration. So, it's very similar, I think to, in the private sector, a situation where you have a president of a board and a CEO Right, who reports to the board. Yeah.
Carrie:And in a city like Houston, the county government is also very present, along with the city government. Because we have a lot of cities within our county, but they're all part of our metropolitan area. So it gets even more confusing with like, who's in charge of what. Cuz you see people from both entities in press conferences and often they're together in press conferences, especially if there's like an emergency management situation. So, there's, yeah, a lot of opportunity there.
Kate:There really are with all the layers and like you said. Yeah. Great point about counties. Counties structure differs so much across location. Some places, counties are like the big players that actually manage a ton of services. In some places they really just manage things, kind rural residents that are outside cities. And in some places they're merged with the city and it's one set of operations, like I said, like in K C K. So, if you're looking in local government, there's so many different opportunities. Not to mention, you know, I mentioned public school districts. Lots of people work in administration there who aren't specifically in education. So there can be opportunities there. And then there's something that is invisible to a lot of people called Metropolitan Planning Organizations or MPOs. There's one in really every big metro, and they are a quasi-governmental agency that manages a lot of high level kind of programs and a lot of federal funding for the region. So they are a distributor of a lot of federal funding, but then they have a major role in managing kind of cross jurisdictional systems and coordinating. So things like 9 1 1 systems, right? 9 1 1 has to work, from wherever you're calling. It needs to actually be routed to the right call center. So stuff like that or elder care or childcare or transportation is huge, right? Because tons of highway transportation crosses lots of jurisdictions. So a city isn't building a highway. Those are really interesting organizations to look at too, cuz they do a lot of coordination and planning kind of hand in hand with cities and counties.
Carrie:So where did you end up?
Kate:So when I became aware of the city manager form of government, like I said, pretty late in the game. I saw that there was a fellowship that the city offered, which is actually, kind of a common thing in especially city manager forms of government. And it was for people who'd recently completed a master's degree. For Kansas City, it was called the Cooking Ham Fellowship. Now it's called the Cooking Ham Null Fellowship. So advertisement for anyone who wants to come look at Kansas City as a start out their career. It was great because at the time it was a year, now it's a two year program, but it's advertised as kind of a 360 degree view of government. So you get to rotate through several departments, and you're doing really important work for those areas cuz they've kind of carved out, here's the role of the fellows. You get to have that rotational component where you see different perspectives. You also have a chance to meet with a lot of staff, sit in on a lot of meetings, do tours too of different city facilities. So it's kind of like a really intense internship, right? That's treated more like a full-time role. Yeah, so that's what I did my first year and it was fantastic. I loved it, loved working for the city and getting all that perspective. At the end of the year, it was actually a really challenging budget time of the city. It was kind of after the recession in the late 2000 tens or the aughts, I guess is what we would say, right? And so the best opportunity for me was to go work for a department and specifically the water department. Because, even in local government, there's additional divisions across departments. And specifically some cities have what's called an enterprise department, which is a department that's mostly fee-based. So water and sewer is a common one. Sometimes trash, solid waste is one. but it means they have a little bit more funding stability, because people are paying for those specific services, like they would, you know, a private utility. Mm-hmm. So I went to work for the water department. Again, it wasn't my first choice, but, it was the best option and I leaned in and I learned a lot. I learned a lot about the perspective of working for a department. Met a lot of really great people. I still had my eyes on. I'd like to get back to the city manager's office. because I was like, that really has the ongoing 360 degree view of the city, right? They're working with all the departments and coordinating and the city managers, managing the department directors. But there's some support roles that I thought I'd love to help in that realm. And so after about a year, I got asked to come back to the city manager's office. And this was a good, in terms of the pros and cons of taking on a new role. I really wanted to move there and I wanted to do that work. But the person who was the city manager at the time, was having some challenges and kind of didn't have a great reputation amongst staff. I was really nervous about that because I just thought, I don't know, I'm a little bit worried about working for somebody who doesn't seem to have a great connection to the organization. And I was just, I was like, what if I get too connected to them? You know, and that hurts me professionally. So I reached out to mentors that I had in the organization and asked their opinion like, Hey, this is what I want, but also what do you think? And they were really familiar with, there was just a tumultuous time in leadership for the city, at all levels. And I really got the advice that they said, look, I don't think that person's gonna be here much longer from knowledge and intuition. Yeah. And I sort of didn't ask any questions. I was like, okay. So I went ahead and made the move and they also reassured me that, you know, you'd be supporting that department, you're fine. Like, you're not gonna be seen as their right hand person or anything. So, I made the move and sure enough, within a few months that city manager was gone. And the person who came in as the interim and who ended up becoming the permanent city manager for quite a while, was somebody I had worked with. He was the former budget director. I really had to ask him almost immediately, you know, he had put into this huge role in taking on all these new things. And here I was like an analyst and I was like, Hey, what do you want me to do specifically? because, it was a kind of special projects role and it really changed with who was a city manager. And that was just, it was like a huge turning point, although I didn't see it at the time. He said, oh, well, I'm really interested in performance measures and data and we've never really focused having somebody in that role. So can you kind of dig in and on that and help start putting something together? That was really the start of a program that really I ended up kind of building and supporting for ultimately about 12 to 13 years of the time I was with the city. About a year into it, a year and a half into it. I advocated to bring on another staff member who I'd worked with in the past who'd been working in the budget department and, she and I, my colleague Julie and I, we really built the program together over that timeframe. We had this goal that had been set out by the city manager of, Hey, we wanna improve city services. We'd like to see how we can use data to do that. So again, it really aligned with a lot of motivation that I already had about like, hey, making things better, solving problems, layering together a lot of information to do so. I had to actually like, dig in and learn a lot. I had some baseline knowledge of using data and doing analysis from college and grad school, probably grad school more, but I took a ton of Excel classes. I took classes about performance measurement, performance management, and kind of developed a baseline for myself on the job. I have a lot of people now who ask, oh, did you study data in school? And I'm like, no, I didn't. I really developed all of that, those skill sets. So we had the chance to build this data office. We had a lot of freedom, which was amazing to have, here's the goals and here's some specific things, but, you know, pursue these in the ways that you think are best. We got to build our team. So we added staff over time. It was an amazing opportunity to build like a really, highly effective team and create a small internal culture to that team, that helps support really good outcomes. It was very collaborative, very creative, and very iterative. Like every year we would take a look at what we've accomplished, take a look at what leadership was seeking, and then figure out what we needed to change or modify or add for the upcoming year.
Carrie:Can you give us some examples of some projects that you worked on or some outcomes that you got to see, during that time?
Kate:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So one of the first things we really worked on was the city had implemented a system for residents to call and make requests for city services. It was called 311, and it was a pretty big effort across the country. 311 was actually dedicated as a number. Mm-hmm. I think in the early two thousands maybe. And so it became pretty common for cities to set up 311 call centers, kind of like 911, but for, you know, trash pickup or street lights out or whatever. So Kansas City had implemented a 311 about the time that I started, and I think something they didn't anticipate, a lot of cities didn't, was that all of a sudden there's also this massive amount of data that they had about, how many people called, what did they call about? How long did it take to resolve the things they called about? Which areas of the city were the most issues reported? I spent really a lot of the first few years digging into that data with departments and helping them understand some of their service areas and how they're performing. For some of them, it was the first really concrete service data they had on a regular basis, right? Because it was changing every day. Yeah. So we could help answer questions about which areas of the city are we really getting the most pothole calls? You know, we have three different maintenance groups that are working to close potholes. Are they closing them? Are they getting the same number,and are they taking the same amount of time to close them? And if not, why? And so that's where, over time, initially it was a lot of like, Hey, let's crunch the data. Let's present it, let's discuss it. But over time we really also added in that continuous improvement in innovation role. Cuz you know, understanding what you're seeing is one thing, but then figuring out what to do with it and how to improve is another. Everyone on our team did training in the area of kind of lean six Sigma or continuous improvement, to understand kind of some of those methods too about process improvement, and how can you take different approaches to actually make change. So that was a big one. We also worked a lot with city survey data. So the city did a resident survey, asking residents about their perceptions. We worked with a contractor to do the survey, so they would send it and collect the data and give it to us. It was a random sample. But we would get the data and, analyze it and then kind of turn it into stories that were relevant to different groups. So we could go to a department and say, Hey, here's our residents see your services. Looks like there's some differences geographically. This area of the city seems really happy with you and this area has more frustrations. Here's the priorities they're laying out for you. Here's how many people say that they're using the bike lanes and here's where those people live. And then we also would give that information to elected officials and back to the public about like, Hey, here's what you all are telling us that your satisfaction and prioritization of, of city services and then here's what the city's doing about that. Here's how we're translating that into plans, into action.
Carrie:So it sounds like this was probably really a fulfilling work in some ways for you. You had actual information from the constituents. It wasn't just. What you thought the constituents wanted, but you had the actual data and you were able to turn it into action and then see the results of those actions.
Kate:Yeah, it was really exciting. It was really fulfilling. In terms of the types of work, it was also really varied. You know, we worked with a lot of departments, a lot of topics. And then as I mentioned, the team environment was really a highly functional team and worked really well together. We got to have a lot of creative freedom. And then another piece was that just really coincidentally, data and performance in cities was starting to be a big topic across the country. And so we saw national foundations and organizations come in and say, Hey, we wanna help you with this. You know, we're gonna run a training program for city staff, or we're gonna do technical assistance where we have people who will coach you through some of these efforts and help you do it better. So that was really exciting cuz you know, we got to learn even more, develop further. And then we also got to be connected to other staff in cities across the US. So it kind of, yeah, extended that network and built kind of a community of people who were seeking to do this work. You know, at this point I'm working for the city for 10 or 11 years, and I had friends who'd changed jobs, you know, five times in the timeframe. A lot of people were like, wow, you really still work for the same place? And I was like, yeah, but it's great. It's changes so much and I'm still learning so much. I even thought maybe I'll retire from the city, right? With the city's retirement plan, I was like, I could actually retire in my fifties if I wanted to. Oh, wow. And so I was kind of like, it felt, you know, I did not commit to that. I was like, that's too much to say. This is definitely happening. But I was like, I could see it. And then, a lot of things happened, right. Kind of as things were going pretty well. So I was definitely kind of at a mid-career point. I'd been with the city for 14 years, and the pandemic started. That changed everybody's work overnight. Yeah. You know, I started working from home as many people did. As somebody who was co-managing a team, we had to restructure everything that looked like for how we all interacted, how we worked, the type of work we were doing cuz we were so responsive to city and department needs. It was sort of like on a dime. A bunch of stuff we were doing was no longer relevant and we had to pivot and. figure out how to serve the current needs. Mm-hmm. And then I had two kids who were in elementary school and they were doing school from home. They ended up being at home for a year. It was really hard, like my husband also worked from home, so we would kind of go back and forth, but betwe, you know, that effort of supporting their schooling while trying to work on top of everything. So something a lot of people experienced and I think a lot of people saw as a turning point. And then also during that timeframe, a lot of my team left for other opportunities. Right. Cause everybody was sort of reevaluating and figuring things out. Mm-hmm. And then we also had turnover in the city leadership and, you know, priorities shifted a bit there too. A year or so ago, I was starting to feel like I wasn't having the same growth opportunity. Right. I wasn't quite sure actually where I was going next. My day-to-day, I still did a lot of things and worked with a lot of people, that I really enjoyed, but I was not quite seeing what the path was. I mentioned my colleague and really also my best friend Julie, who had developed the data program with me. She was one of the members of the team that had left to move to another city department. And we were kind of both at this place trying to figure out what was gonna happen next. And she sort of said, oh, well, what if we like left to start our own firm? And we had kind of talked about it in the past and kind of sometimes joked about it as like, oh, well someday when we're running our own firm. And so I don't know, it's so different than where it was at. I really didn't think much of it, but I mentioned it to my husband and was like, yeah, you know what Julie said? And he was like, yeah, why wouldn't you wanna do that? And it like, it totally threw me It was like a 180 degree. I had not given any thought. And then once I started thinking about it, I couldn't come up with reasons that I wouldn't wanna do it. In fact, everything I kept getting more and more excited. It was actually a conversation we had, you know, late at night. I always say to people like, he fell asleep and then I like, couldn't sleep for like three hours because I couldn't get it outta my head. And I ended up texting Julie the next morning and being like, okay, that thing you said, let's actually talk about this. And it was very much like once that door had been opened, I got kept getting more and more excited, especially since I had seen the benefit of working, she's the best, you know, creative partner I've ever had. We just spent a decade building something that was really exciting and fulfilling. We could build something else, you know, that really is doing a lot of the same things and supporting the same type of people and having the same function, but with a totally different type of creative freedom because we would be the bosses That never had been a huge thing for me. Earlier I was pretty happy being a kind of middle management and all of a sudden that type of idea of like, oh, I could be in control with my co-founder. Really attractive to me.
Carrie:Have you gotten to learn so much in like a safe space, right? Mm-hmm. you got to try a lot of things out and learn a lot and make a lot of connections and grow so much in a different space that I would think it kind of gives you confidence to be able to go do that in a new space.
Kate:It did. Yeah. I, I do think there's something, the idea that I, you know, had a really well established career in this field, and I actually did feel like an expert. I'm not immune to imposter syndrome, right? Where there are times I'm like, I do know what I'm talking about, right? Even now, but if I stood back and looked at the evidence and then what people told me, it's one thing to think, do I know what I'm talking about? But then when I would talk to someone who needed help, I would say, oh, yeah. Okay. Well, I think I know what you need to do. I would suggest this, I would suggest this. Have you thought about this? You know, my mind would jump into motion and I really felt like I had a grasp on how to address these types of issues around city services and using data and pushing for innovation and change. So you're absolutely right. I felt like it was a really great impetus to say, I can actually take a lot of these skill sets, not to mention the networks and connections, and go work in a more flexible environment, build something new. So have that sense of growth again, and also actually serve a broader set of people, right? I loved working in the city government and I still, some of the best colleagues I've ever had are people I've worked with there, but, you know, still contained to one organization. It was attractive to think, oh, we could work with all sorts of people across the country and different types of organizations even because we are very much focused on working with cities and public sector organizations, but nonprofits provide a lot of the same services and face a lot of the same challenges as cities. We're definitely working with nonprofits and then others that are aligned in that world like foundations and universities. It was sort of like could take everything I have and extend it even further.
Carrie:Yeah. So are you doing a lot of the same type of work where you're taking their data and turning it around to kind of show them, you know, this is what's happening over here and why aren't you utilizing this here? Are you doing kind of the same type of service that you were describing earlier that you were doing for the city?
Kate:Yeah, so I think the benefit we had working for the city is that we didn't necessarily call departments clients, but we knew that's what they were. Our clients are customers internally and we were very client focused already, right? The way we approach things was, Hey, let us know where you're at and we'll meet you where you are and help you figure out where to go next. And so I think that positioned us well for where we're at now. Our general kind of tagline as an organization is we're helping organizations reach better outcomes using their data. That takes a lot of different forms. So sometimes it is actually just helping them with data analysis and data storytelling. So finding data, analyzing it, putting it into a narrative that's helpful for them. Sometimes it's more on that kind of continuous improvement effort of helping them gather feedback from people and figuring out what, where they wanna go with a program or a process to improve upon it. So we've been in an operation, for, at this point about six months. So it's been kind of a whirlwind and we're, I think we're still learning all the types of things that are possible. And then another area that we're working in is, actually training and kind of coaching cities, who wanna put together, you know, data or performance programs internally, but they feel like they need some technical assistance and help in setting up the programs and figuring out what the best practices are.
Carrie:So for students listening to this conversation and thinking, you know, this sounds really interesting to me. I'd really like to pursue some kind of role like this. Let's say they're just applying to college, or maybe they're in college or even considering grad school. Obviously you have your political science degree and then you have your urban planning degree. What are some other examples of programs that you think really help people in this field?
Kate:Yeah, I think more kind of public administration, public service, public policy type degrees, even at the undergrad level. Political science was sort of what the option was for me. But I think when I look around, I see more, or public affairs is another one that, that is another name that it's called sometimes. The thing that's very different about the public sector. One is the type of environment, it's a very different type of place to work than the private sector. It also faces a really different set of problems and issues and opportunities. I think understanding kind of the context around those. So I think the classes are important, but then also if you have the chance again to intern or even shadow any type of kind of government environment, that's the hook, right? That's the thing that lets you see, oh, is this interesting to me day in and day out? Is this engaging to me? When I was with the city on an annual basis, I hosted a lot of interns and I could see for some of them, they were like, I'm not sure what I think about this. And at the end they were like, oh my gosh, this is so great. This is so cool..Like they were really hooked on the types of issues that they encountered and also loved that type of public sector environment and the kind of unique elements within it. Until a couple years ago, I thought that was my entire career path, and then I made this massive pivot. Subject matter wise, I'm very much working the same things and even with one of the same people. I'm in the private sector, I'm a consultant and I'm an entrepreneur, and those were all things that were so outside the boundaries for me. So I think that the idea that of constant awareness of different opportunities and taking the chance to like pause and think about, even if it's something that you're like, no, that's not what I thought I would do. Sitting back and evaluating it and giving some space to things that you think are really outside the boundaries. Cuz I think it's really possible to try to define a career path that's pretty narrow and where you don't see interesting opportunities that might actually fulfill what you're looking for. Right. Yeah. But they just aren't what you've scripted. Yeah.
Carrie:Well, and like you mentioned earlier in the conversation, that type of role when you were an undergraduate, I mean, I don't know how much that even really existed across city governments, right? You were talking about how that was fairly new in the city that you were in, and then there was this kind of national push to help cities form these offices and these initiatives. So yeah, there's also things that while you're in college, a lot of your future path may be something that doesn't exist yet, or it may be a company that hasn't been founded yet, or it may be a whole field. Right. You know, that is yet to be developed. So that's another reason to just have your eyes and ears open because there's going to be new things, like literally things that didn't exist before. Yes. That could totally be in line with your skills and your experience and your interests.
Kate:Yeah. No, that's very true. And I will say specifically, I would really advise people, to take the opportunity to learn about data. It as an undergrad or in grad school. I would encourage everyone to take a look about whether that could be actually part of your career. But even if you're like, no, I don't think I want a career, you know, specifically working with data, it is starting to be something that's just fundamental to organizations Yeah. In the workplace. And even if you are not seeking to be like an analyst, having a basic understanding of data and how it's used and how it gets used in managing performance, how it's used in storytelling. I think really it's the type of thing that kind of can give you a leg up in understanding that part of any organization.
Carrie:Yeah. So looking back over your story, do you have any big picture advice for students, whether it's specific to your career path or not, but things that you have either witnessed or you've experienced yourself that you would wanna share as pieces of advice to those who are listening?
Kate:You know, I would be okay with not knowing where you're going, which also can be hard if you have friends that have a very specific goal in mind. You can feel like you're very untethered or maybe you have parent or somebody else in your life who really is pushing you to be mm-hmm. more focused on a goal. But I think if you are not sure about the specific area you wanna work in, I think there's a lot of other things you can explore along the way, right. That are also important in the workplace. So what types of things do I like to do? What, type of work environment do I enjoy? How big of an organization? I don't think I would've known this in high school, but I really liked working for a really big organization for a while. The city had over 4,000 employees and there was something really powerful about being able to work within a bigger organization and make change there. But some people, that sounds horrifying and they'd like to work in a much smaller setting, which is where I'm at now, and I'm really enjoying that too. Yeah. So, even if you take a job in a sector that you're like, I don't see myself working in this or, a job that you don't see as heading down your career path, take notes on what you do like about it or what you don't like about it, and that can help shape, you know, the next thing you're looking for.
Carrie:Yeah. And sometimes in different seasons of life, different things are attractive too. A lot of times what you enjoy doing in your twenties may not be what you wanna be doing in your fifties. So yeah, that can absolutely change over time.
Kate:Also, I guess this might be pretty common for people that you talk to, but I mean, I'm a big advocate for you should be motivated and moved by the work you do. I'm also a huge advocate of work-life balance, so I probably excluded career paths that seemed to me like they would be all encompassing or, you know, overwhelming in terms of a time commitment. But I also think having a job that you are really connected to and where you feel like you're making a difference and having an impact is, I think really important.
Carrie:Yeah. I think for a lot of people that is really important, especially just for your motivation and also for your kind of vision for yourself, right. And to be able to see down the path and to grow as a person too, because I think when you're really investing in something that's meaningful and fulfilling, it also contributes to your own growth.
Kate:Yeah. Yeah. Aligning with that, and bringing back to data, there's some data that I saw making circulation on social media that some people may have seen that it's an analysis of basically a survey that's about who's people spend time with over their lifespan. Yes. Did you see this?
Carrie:Yes, I saw that recently. Yes, I did.
Kate:So, you know, a takeaway that's relevant here is that from the time you're really in your twenties until your sixties ish, colleagues are people who you spend a huge amount of time with. And so working in an environment where you enjoy your colleagues, both a specific organization where you like your colleagues, but also a type of environment where you know you can work well with people and collaborate and do interesting things. That's gonna be a huge contributor to your kind of satisfaction with your life. Yeah, absolutely. I would also just make a plug again for public sector and local government, and honestly, the state and federal government, too. My particular career path has taken me through local government, but, I still don't think it gets the level of attention as a lot of private sector careers do, especially in K through 12. But I think when people take a look at it, for a lot of people, it's very attractive. It's very unique and also it actually offers, you can take a lot of professional careers in a public sector direction, right? There are like Public works engineers, for instance. People who work in the healthcare field, who work in the public health field. So, it's worth considering as an opportunity in exploring.
Carrie:Absolutely. Well, Kate, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your story with us. I just love that your story of growth and kind of pivoting and changing, not even really changing direction, but just kind of collecting all of these skills and experiences that you've had over time and putting them forward into your path. That's just really interesting how you've put all the pieces together and it's really exciting with what you're doing now. So I look forward to watching you. Do you wanna tell people where they can find you?
Kate:Yep. Our company is called Porchlight Insights and we are on LinkedIn. And I'm on there as well, Kate Bender. Feel free to look me up or even reach out. I feel really passionately about helping people navigate their path and so like helping people out where I can. Thanks again for the opportunity to come on and talk about this. I really appreciate how you've created a platform to tell these types of stories, cuz I think they're really helpful. Thank you.
Carrie:Thanks so much, Kate.
Do you know someone I should interview? Please DM me on Instagram@pathsinprogresspodcast and let me know who I should talk to. I would love to hear about how these stories are impacting your journey. Please follow Paths in Progress wherever you download your podcasts and leave a review to let me know what you think. You can also follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn at Paths in Progress Podcast. Our music is by John Grimmett and the artwork is by Edgar Alanis. Thanks again for joining me today.