Meet Katie Plocheck Hunt, one of our Strategy Directors, in our first Strategist Q+A! Katie has been working with Heart+Mind for the past five years, unraveling the whys behind consumer choices for a variety of client products and services. Katie is an expert at peeling back the layers of human decision making and telling the story of what it all means and why it matters. Now she shares part of her story with us.
Q: Describe what you do in 5 words or less.
A: See big picture; shrink it.
Q: When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A: A veterinarian, and then a photojournalist.
Q: If you weren’t a strategist, you’d be a…
A: A therapist or a professor. A professor because I love teaching and thinking big; I also really love distilling those ideas down to what they mean for people, and impacting people’s lives along the way. I’d be a therapist for similar reasons: I like talking through how people see the world and how they feel about things. Then, I enjoy the process of “abstracting” these things with a metaphor, or analogy or another story that flips the narrative, or gets people to look at their own reality in a new, refreshing, compassionate way.
Q: Your dream strategy project is…
A: To work on a children’s toy brand like Lego or Playmobil–so many possibilities and so incredible to get to see the world through the mind of a child.
Q: The quality in others you most admire is…
A: Genuine kindness; in order to be kind, you need to truly listen and see others. In order to do it truly genuinely, you need to feel self-possessed, embodied, and grounded in who you are. Together, these traits combine into a superpower.
Q: You’re secretly really good at…
A: Creative writing. I’ve kept a journal since I was young and it holds lots of creative non-fiction and poetry–two things I really enjoy and that keep me sane.
Q: What do you like to do in your free time?
A: Play with my 5-year old son, care for my plants, and live and eat intentionally and cleanly. I also love design and fashion. I could spend hours thinking about textures, patterns, color palettes and how they all play together.
Q: What is one thing about yourself that would surprise people?
A: I’m a very introverted people person.
Q: What question are you dying to answer that we haven’t asked?
A: What are your top 3 favorite novels of all time?
Q: What is the answer?
A: Middlesex, A Thousand Splendid Suns, East of Eden
Whether she is shrinking the big picture, penning an introspective poem, or playing with her little sidekick, Katie brings both her heart and mind to life.