Her Story
About Kathleen
I am the Executive Communications Officer for the Chief Global Affairs and Legal Officer at Amazon, where I've been working in the public relations field for more than a decade. My career started with freelance journalism for small local newspapers, including the Portland Tribune in Oregon. I really truly believed that if people were informed about the world, it would be a better place. From there, I jumped to non-profit work because I felt passionate about giving back and having education as a pillar of importance in the world. Then I joined a company that led executive leadership summits, bringing together top minds of Fortune 500 executives across North America to solve for different problems they were having. I was working in support of Chief Human Resource Officers, Chief Information Security Officers, and Chief Financial Officers in that capacity. Today, my main area of expertise is executive communications - being able to translate and understand executive needs and bring global teams together to support pushing different priorities and initiatives and raising awareness of the good that different companies are doing. No day is the same for me, which I know is a little cliche, but it truly is that. There are surprises at any given moment. The majority of my day is organizing, planning, and executing upon a variety of different executive engagements, and that translates mainly to communications efforts within those. Whether it be leading on media interviews with CBS Morning, or aligning with teams to highlight different global initiatives, to ensuring that any risk that could impact our business or our executives is being addressed in a timely manner at a very high level. One of my most notable professional achievements has been managing the keynotes for Andy Jassy, who's the current CEO of Amazon, during reInvent each year, our annual cloud summit. Being able to support his vision of our newest, greatest, most powerful, influential, customer-serving initiatives, services, and products and being able to tell that story in a really effective and powerful way to large, broadspread audiences remains a highlight for me.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kathleen
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to hard, hard work. And then I think also, I mean, part of it, genuinely and honestly, is luck and timing. Those are variables you can't always manage or have in your control. But then I would also say it's finding people and leaders you align with and believe in, and actively doing what you can to make sure that they're successful. Finding an executive that I feel personally that I relate to has really made a difference in being able to give that hard, hard work and be able to be a lot more genuine in how I represent. It makes me excited to go to work every day, knowing that personally and professionally - I think it's sort of intertwined for me - I care about the people that I'm supporting.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I'm going to say two, just because I can't stick to one. But I think the first is thanking people for their input. If you don't always agree with someone, you don't need to cater to every single opinion that is being given to you. You can kindly say thank you for your input, and move forward with the best plan for the business, or your executive, or yourself. And then the second one I would say that stuck with me is self-effacing can be self-erasing. I try and practice this most days. It's sort of top of mind for me as I've grown and developed my career. I think I lean into humor a lot, and it's sort of a superpower of mine to navigate a lot of really interesting, dynamic situations and places and experiences. But really owning your strengths, and your work, and your skills, and being clear about that to folks through the performance of your work really should stand for its own in trying to make light of any of it. It doesn't do folks justice, I've learned.
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