Kat Simkiss

I attribute my success to my never-ending curiosity and being a good person. My resilience is my proudest achievement - getting knocked down 9 times and getting up 10. I've faced a lot of challenges in my life, from early career setbacks to having to literally run from a difficult situation and start over, leaving everything I owned behind. But I'm super fortunate to have lots of guardian angels and good people in my life now. I think being a good person encompasses compassion, empathy, kindness, and willingness to be there for somebody else. My curiosity has driven me to continuously learn and explore new areas, from Oracle systems to AI to understanding my own neurodivergence, and that constant learning has kept me moving forward even when things got tough.

The best career advice I ever received came in two pivotal moments. First, when I was at Comcast working as a PM, I had become so emotionally invested in a project that one guy sat me down and said, 'I am afraid you have lost your objectivity.' That taught me it's very important to always stay objective and stay above the fray. The second piece came in the form of a meeting where I was explaining to the chief accounting officer at Comcast why a technology thing was never going to work. I had this whiteboard and I was going mad scientist, explaining all the bits and parts and connection points, and at the end I said it's never gonna work. He looked at me and said something incredibly insulting that made me well up with tears. But what I recognized in that moment was that I knew everything about this situation, but I wasn't able to communicate it to him in a way that he understood. That was a pivotal moment in my life because I realized it doesn't matter what you know if you don't know how to communicate it effectively to different audiences, because everybody needs to hear it slightly differently. You're not going to be able to do what you need to do or go where you want to go. So I started really studying communication. I'm a big fan of feedback.

I would say that authenticity is the highest form of currency that we have available. Be yourself. Authenticity is marketable, and that's who we are - we need to market ourselves in every interaction, whether you're selling your point to the person behind the counter because you want your order, or you're talking to someone on the phone, or even talking to a family member trying to convey your point. It's all a form of sale because you want to convince somebody of something. So being authentic, being true to who you are, is the most valuable thing you can bring to any situation in this industry.

AI is outpacing everything right now - it's the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity. For a lot of folks, the biggest challenge is that they get cozy and comfortable, or get stuck doing the same thing over and over again, and that becomes a bit of tunnel vision. My life was very volatile, so I never really had a situation where I could settle into doing the same thing repeatedly. I think the biggest challenge and opportunity is staying on top of emerging technologies and keeping your eyes open. You need to understand how everything is kind of connected so that you can understand the bigger picture, and that ultimately gives you a better sense of where you want to fit in it. It's about avoiding tunnel vision and seeing how all the pieces connect.

God and faith are most important to me, along with authenticity and doing the best that you can in any situation. You're not always gonna get it right, and that's okay. I'm learning now that it's also okay to understand my boundaries - understanding what my brain can and cannot do. What's been very challenging for me in my life is learning how to say no, but I'm working on that. I believe that failure is part of success, and you cannot reach the pinnacle unless you've had attempts to get there. It's about doing the best you can and knowing that it's okay to pivot, to go back and redirect, get the education or the specialty you need, and then move forward. Being a good person encompasses compassion, empathy, kindness, and willingness to be there for somebody else.