Client Stories

For over 20 years, Kate has partnered with education technology and social impact organizations ranging from large foundations and public benefit corporations to high-growth start-ups and organizations leading the way in next-generation product development.

Success at a Glance

Scribe Concepts

When K12 publishing company ScribeConcepts went through a major change, Kate partnered with them to ensure they could focus on what matters most - and transform their business in the process.

Step-Up Tutoring

When a new leader stepped in at Step-Up Tutoring, Kate’s trusted advising set the organization up for success in their next phase of growth.

XQ / Emerson

Kate partnered with XQ to create a product to scale their high school transformation tools so that communities who needed them most could make their college access dreams a reality.

Pivoting for Smart Growth

When ScribeConcepts went through a significant leadership change, they found themselves at a pivotal moment in their business. Having provided end-to-end project support in the fast-growing K12 publishing industry for nearly 20 years, they had built a proven model with incredible growth potential.

This moment of change in leadership sparked a moment of reflection - and they realized that what got them here would not be what would get them there - to the place they wanted to take their business in the future.

This is where a partnership with Kate came in. As a seasoned senior leader who has worked with small and large companies alike, Kate knows what it takes to pivot fast. She also knows the unique challenges of the education industry and how to position a business like ScribeConcepts for growth and success. Her reputation made her a clear choice to support the organization during this key time.

“Kate was one of the few executives I have known who immediately telegraphed to me a friendly, collaborative, open-to-any-solution mindset that gave me confidence the game could be won.” -David Rust, Interim GM

Kate began her work with focused listening sessions. She developed a deep understanding of the business and helped them position their current model within the market context and defined the most important priorities to focus on first. She did this not only through applying her technical expertise, but by building trust and encouraging open communication within the team. She understood the impact transition can have on individuals and interpersonal relationships and took the time to build the rapport needed to support the team.

“Kate gained the trust of the team and made every individual in our group feel heard, which was incredibly valuable in this process. Her ability to knit together information from so many places and help us map out an end-to-end workflow was impressive. She brought a much-needed outside perspective and delivered results.” -Jody Knowles, CEO

Within four weeks, she delivered an end-to-end process map that outlined how the teams within the organization collaborated from the beginning stages of project negotiations to final deliveries. She also provided strategic recommendations for both quick wins and long-term growth that proved invaluable.

“ScribeConcepts experienced a 125% growth in revenue in 2023 (compared to 2022) thanks to processes Kate helped us define and build.” Natalie Rebentisch, Director of Business Development

With the combination of technical knowledge and personal leadership qualities, Kate inspired confidence and provided the clarity needed for the team to make the strategic moves needed. As a trusted expert, honest broker, and caring mentor, Kate enabled ScribeConcepts to achieve the growth and sustainability they knew was possible.

Stepping Up: The Power of Supported Leadership

With an innovative human capital strategy and unyielding commitment to student success, Step-Up Tutoring has produced impressive outcomes in the virtual high-impact tutoring space. When students in a pilot study achieved 4x results in math growth and demand for their services were expanding past capacity, Step-Up’s founding team knew that they had created something special. But how would they scale? How could they create a sustainable model that would ensure access for the thousands of kids who deserve the type of targeted support they could offer?

When a new CEO with deep K12 experience was appointed, she needed a trusted advisor to support critical decision making at this important juncture of organizational growth. With a proven track record and supportive, honest approach, Kate was the perfect partner to provide both the product strategy and leadership advising needed.

“Working with Kate was like having decades of experience and the exact expertise I needed in my back pocket. She helped me cut through what would have been months of work in weeks, and not only gave me the insights I needed but brought along key stakeholders and earned the trust of my Board and team.” -Sam Oliveri, CEO

With her years of experience, Kate was quickly able to develop a comprehensive product development strategy that enabled decision making based not only on technical capabilities, but also financial viability, partner compatibility, and market conditions. Knowing the space well, Kate knew what to look for and the right questions to ask of potential product partners. Her keen sense of the future of the market and “been there done that” experience enabled the kind of analysis not possible from a consulting approach divorced from “real life” experience.

With clear recommendations and a solid implementation plan in place, the team gained clarity about the path forward. But it was the trust that she built - by providing support to amazing leadership talent in a key moment - that the confidence was inspired to lead boldly into the future.

“Even more than her strategy guidance and product work, Kate could intuit what I needed as a first time CEO and served as the thought partner, champion, mentor and friend that I needed. [...] If you are tackling big problems, building something new, or treading new ground, you need a Kate!” -Sam Oliveri, CEO

Scaling with Purpose

The XQ Institute is the nation’s leading high school transformation organization dedicated to rethinking the high school experience so every student graduates ready to succeed in college, career, and real life. For over a decade, XQ has been innovating around high school redesign and transformation projects with a focus on equity for all students.

To reach more communities, XQ needed a strategy to scale their products and services so that more people could easily use and adapt them for their unique contexts. With the complexities involved in high school course offerings and college and career ready metrics, this is no small feat.

With extensive knowledge of both the workforce learning and college-ready space, Kate is perfectly positioned to bring this vision to life. Kate is able to use her extensive network to bring in the specific technology and design teams needed to build each product. For their current district audit product, her team is using AI and machine learning to build a system that will learn from every batch of data it analyzes to continuously improve both its efficiency and effectiveness as it scales.

This is what keeps bringing XQ back to Kate for their ongoing transformation work - not only does she have the technical expertise that has helped her successfully launch over 100 products, she knows how to build high-performing teams that care about the “why” and understand the nuances of the industry. For 5+ years, Kate has been a trusted XQ partner, helping them utilize technology to scale and implement their best ideas.

“Kate is a phenom. [...] She is equally talented in extracting viable designs from fuzzy front-end brainstorms, to building products that succeed in the wild. Her expertise in product development and marketing run deep, but her ability to contextualize product development within larger organizational strategy and culture makes her one of the most powerful thought partners I have ever had.” -Lauren J. Bierbaum, Ph.D., Head of Research, Data, and Evaluation

For companies with great ideas that need a technology solution to create room to scale, Kate is your go-to advisor. From inception to full implementation, Kate can help you launch your product so that you can do the most good for the most people.

Testimonials

Working with Kate was like having decades of experience and the exact expertise I needed in my back pocket. She helped me cut through what would have been months of work in weeks, and not only gave me the insights I needed but brought along key stakeholders and earned the trust of my Board and team.

Kate could intuit what I needed as a first time CEO and served as the thought partner, champion, mentor and friend that I needed, as someone who has literally been there, wore the same shoes and walked the walk.

Client Stories

Success at a Glance

Scribe Concepts

Step-Up Tutoring

XQ / Emerson

Pivoting for Smart Growth

“Kate was one of the few executives I have known who immediately telegraphed to me a friendly, collaborative, open-to-any-solution mindset that gave me confidence the game could be won.” -David Rust, Interim GM

“ScribeConcepts experienced a 125% growth in revenue in 2023 (compared to 2022) thanks to processes Kate helped us define and build.” Natalie Rebentisch, Director of Business Development

Stepping Up: The Power of Supported Leadership

Scaling with Purpose

Testimonials

SAMANTHA BROWN OLIVIERI

CEO, Step Up Tutoring

Client Stories

Success at a Glance

Scribe Concepts

Step-Up Tutoring

XQ / Emerson

Pivoting for Smart Growth

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“Kate was one of the few executives I have known who immediately telegraphed to me a friendly, collaborative, open-to-any-solution mindset that gave me confidence the game could be won.” -David Rust, Interim GM

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“ScribeConcepts experienced a 125% growth in revenue in 2023 (compared to 2022) thanks to processes Kate helped us define and build.” Natalie Rebentisch, Director of Business Development

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Testimonials

SAMANTHA BROWN OLIVIERI

CEO, Step Up Tutoring